I would like to request a private profile option on Lemmy.
Currently, users who value their privacy have limited control over how others view their profiles and activity. It would be great to have an option that allows users to make their profiles private, giving them more control over their personal information and online presence.
Features i like to suggest:
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Private profiles: Allow users to restrict public access to their profile activity.
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Activity visibility controls: Let users choose whether their posts, comments, and communities they participate in are publicly visible through their profile.
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Follower or access approval: If feasible, allow users to approve who can view their profile activity.
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Default privacy settings: Give users the option to choose their preferred profile visibility when creating an account.
I understand that Lemmy is a federated, open-source platform, and implementing private profiles could present technical challenges because posts and comments may already be distributed across different instances. However, having additional privacy controls would be a valuable improvement for users who want more control over their digital footprint.
Privacy should be an important part of the fediverse experience. I hope the developers and community will consider this feature for a future release.
This sounds more like a Lemmy feature request than a Summit one. Summit is only one of many apps that you can use to access Lemmy (like all the Reddit apps before the whole API mess a few years back), not to mention the web interface itself if you’d rather not use an app at all.
I think you can request new Lemmy features on the GitHub, but I’ve never done it myself.
Yep you are correct. Summit cannot hide user profiles. This needs to be implemented on the server side. I don’t think this is actually possible on the fediverse due to how federation works. It’s the same reason why votes are technically public. A backend could however make it harder to users to see profiles but it will never be impossible.
