Previous Usernames No Longer Show On Profiles

[TimeFrenzied (of Xyaery)]

@bvetterdays

when someone’s username is reset for being inappropriate, the content stays in this area

If a Roblox employee changes it, I don’t believe it’ll show up there. If they changed it themselves I believe this happens.

[bvetterdays (roman)]

I’m more so referring to if someone’s username is moderated through a DSA report or whatnot. The username literally remains on the website in this past usernames section, which is a safety concern.

[VitalWinter]

That sounds like a separate bug that coincidentally stops happening because of this bug.

[13_5G (Soundmoji)]

Thats more of a DSA Concern of mods keeping inappropriate names through previous usernames with the new reporting system but this isn’t related to this bug

[TimeFrenzied (of Xyaery)]

Reeks of a bug. I might report that too just incase

[bvetterdays (roman)]

Yeah, guess so, but may as well push for this change rather than the fixing of the original bug because I’ll tell you with absolute certainty I’m getting nowhere if I make a bug report on it staff have ignored my report on inappropriate avatars being unable to be reset through DSA for 3 weeks, and removed my content from it because it was “inappropriate for forum users”. Whole different story though

Edit: Gonna cross-post this here, go like & read my most recent reply if you’re interested:

Critical Moderation Flaw Allows Inappropriate Avatars to Remain on Roblox

There is a critical issue with a part of the current moderation system functionality that no longer works as intended. This flaw is an extreme safety concern, allowing inappropriate and illegal content to remain on the platform indefinitely. Despite moderators’ actions to reset avatars that violate community guidelines, the system fails to actually reset the avatars, meaning that harmful, explicit, or otherwise inappropriate content is still visible to users, including children, on Roblox. Rep…

[13_5G (Soundmoji)]

I believe you can also get moderated unlimited times if you have a inappropriate avatar since they dont actually reset it (If they ban you at all)

But going back to this bug, this shouldnt be related to DSA since this is a seperate issue

[Alexrocks911]

Yet another pointless update with no advance notice nor opportunity for community feedback.

[TimeFrenzied (of Xyaery)]

@Local_OverJ

Can confirm; it’s the same here too.

Yet another useless Roblox update, I suppose. And an infurating one at that.

@PeZsmistic

This is posted in the bug reports category, don’t jump to conclusions. Geez

@xyrafrost

Also happening for me. I hope this was intentional.

@TimeFrenzied

I hope it was intentional too and I came across a similar feature request before. Since roblox has been focusing on child-safety and user-privacy recently I feel like this would be a fitting change AND free up a lot of old usernames that could no-longer be used.

did you like, read any other post lol, how would we know it’s an update for sure

[apenguinnn (hellopenguins)]

Thanks for your feedback — this change is intentional, as we frequently update our safety solutions in an effort to keep users of all ages safe on our platform.

As part of this, we want to let you know about changes going into effect today and over the next several weeks:

1. Starting today, we are temporarily disabling visibility of previous usernames in user profiles.

2. We will permanently disable visibility of previous usernames in Search, starting in Early December.

What we’re changing today

In order to prevent users from being able to see violating usernames on the platform, we are temporarily removing the previous username functionality in user profiles. This will occur for usernames regardless of whether they were previously moderated or not.

Previous View vs. View Starting Today

What we’re changing in December

In early December, we will re-enable the ability for users to see previous usernames in user profiles. Instead, we will disable the ability for users to see previous usernames in Search. At that time, when a user types in a specific username into the search bar, and a user profile is displayed, it will no longer appear with the previous username below the existing username. Instead, only the current username will appear below the displayname.

Current View

View in December

[TimeFrenzied (of Xyaery)]

This is nice! An announcement would be useful next time, but this change is for the better!

@apenguinnn

In order to prevent users from being able to see violating usernames on the platform, we are temporarily removing the previous username functionality in user profiles.

Also:

• How would this change when they are added back? People will still be able to see these violating past usernames, and people will still be able to make them. It just feels like delaying the inevitable here with this update.
• Will users have the option to hide/disable these past usernames when they are bought back? I feel like this would improve privacy and safety for everyone, as stated previously by @xyrafrost

@apenguinnn

• Wouldn’t this change still enable stalkers etc.? They can still figure out who a person is and always find their presence on Roblox–and keep being able to track them down–through a single username. This wouldn’t really help with security in this scenario. I feel like previous usernames shouldn’t be linked to an account unless a user wants them to be, and it would also free usernames for others to use. More use-cases for this below.

Summary

@4BCB

Some people have previous usernames that either have personal info they wish to hide, or maybe regret making some and no longer want to be associated with those usernames. No other platform ties your account to all of your previous usernames, and USER ID’s already exist for moderation purposes.

@goldbucketman27

there are some people who got doxxed in the past or such and want to get rid of such identity;
plus and if we are talking about moderation, user ids exist afterall y’know

@Budtup

oh and one of my past usernames appears in a data breach so that’s fun ;-;

@Valzentia

To prevent impersonation.

They should give us the ability to hide past names. I would give people the ability to pick and choose what past names they want displayed. But they absolutely should not free past usernames, unless someone releases the name; that could also be a good feature.

TL;DR

• How does this change prevent people from seeing violative usernames, will there be a big filter update in December? for all we know they’ll just come back when past usernames are bought back.

• Will we be able to hide, release, AND disable searching by previous usernames? This will enable better privacy for users of all ages.

[Pavsly]

Will users be able to choose whether to keep their past usernames on their profile private or public in December? If not, please consider giving users the ability to remove the previous username functionality on their profiles.

[Keyrut]

I’m worried that this unintentionally empowers stalkers rather than limit them.

While it could be understood that the person being stalked could just change their username, the likelihood of that actually happening feels a lot lower than that of the stalker doing it…

[Oos_W (Oos)]

Is there a reason why the ability for users to see previous usernames in user profiles will be re-enabled in December?

[idelww]

This is a bad idea, and shouldn’t be permanently removed off the searching tab.

This will encourage scamming, people can now change their usernames to avoid getting called out for something bad they did.

People on the consoles, Desktop app & mobile app are unable to find people’s userIDs and save them, if they need to report a user for scamming them or breaking the rules in other ways.

This is a very bad choice, and they should not be permanently removed.

I understand this is a good “privacy” option, however I think it should only affect the profile page, not the searching tab. I would also think, it would be nice to allow people to turn this on/off in case people want to show their old usernames.

Imagine this scenario: Little timmy gets scammed by “NoobyBoy716”, they change username to something different, now little timmy has no way of finding out who the scammer was and how they can tell their friends to prevent getting scammed. He can also not report him because they can’t find him.

Only users on desktop devices wil be able to save people’s accounts in case they need to ban them, or report them for scamming, or beaking the roblox ToS because they can grab the userid from the url.

[Icedemized (Iced)]

This is honestly quite unnecessary, I really don’t understand why this change was made. Quite useless tbqh

[TimeFrenzied (of Xyaery)]

@Keyrut

While it could be understood that the person being stalked could just change their username

They can’t.

@idelww

people can now change their usernames to avoid getting called out for something bad they did.

We already have UserId’s for Roblox to moderate stuff like this. Also I think this is a much worse problem than people who got outright doxxed. Especially considering it costs them 1000 robux every time they want to do this.

@idelww

magine this scenario: Little timmy gets scammed by “NoobyBoy716”, they change username to something different, now little timmy has no way of finding out who the scammer was and how they can tell their friends to prevent getting scammed. He can also not report him because they can’t find him.

The staff member said you’d still be able to search by previous usernames, just not view them on search.

@apenguinnn

Current View

View in December

[MiningPiggie]

@idelww

Imagine this scenario: Little timmy gets scammed by “NoobyBoy716”, they change username to something different, now little timmy has no way of finding out who the scammer was and how they can tell their friends to prevent getting scammed. He can also not report him because they can’t find him.

I don’t entirely think this is a realistic scenario.
For one thing, I heavily doubt a scammer would be willing to spend 12 bucks just to change their username to avoid being banned. For another, this already is more or less possible if the scammer were to just create a new alt account after every scam. Timmy could get the account banned, sure, but it wouldn’t do anything if it’s no longer in use.

[TimeFrenzied (of Xyaery)]

Also, a better report feature that allows you to report players who left a game would be much more ideal for this scenario and allow this update to happen.

[Oos_W (Oos)]

To be fair 1000 robux is a very minimal amount in today’s economy and I believe many bad actors would not hesitate to spend that cost if it meant avoiding the actions of moderation.