CMV: A reddit user hiding their comment history is a strong indicator that they are not acting in good faith.

I’m running into this annoying problem pretty frequently these days. I’m sort of wondering if it’s confirmation bias run amok but I’m still on the fence. Thus, this CMV.

I’ll be arguing on reddit as one does and I’ll get a response on one of my comments or see a take that’s curious. It’s not straight up unhinged (I unfortunately have a lot of practice taking the bait so I usually know when I’ve been had if a little too late) but it’s just enough to make me wonder. Is this person debating in earnest? I’ve come up with a very simple heuristic and it is this: check to see if their comment history is hidden.

I’m at the point where I am pretty confident that I can determine whether someone’s comment history is hidden merely from a brief interaction. I’ll give it a couple rounds if it’s borderline and then when I’m pretty confident I’ve determined whether the person is trolling or not I’ll check their comment history and BAM! Hidden comment history for troll, visible for people with often profound disagreements but typically strong foundations.

At first I thought I was just getting lucky but a disconcerting proportion of the time I am right. The people who argue in earnest, even if I have strong disagreements with them, tend to keep their comment histories available for review. Not that it matters but I’ve consciously started upvoting such interactions to combat the plague (small victories, right?).

Convince me that this is either just simple confirmation bias or there are some other reasons besides reddit’s stated positions (to prevent harassment – which, like account blocking, it does little to prevent) that one would hide their comment history. Really anything to explain away and make me feel better about what I see as an annoying if not downright troubling trend.