Stacker News Bug Report

Description:

In the scenario where a user initially has the username A, creates a post or comment, and subsequently changes his username to B, the search results for username A still display the posts or comments associated with the original user who now has username B.

The search feature should only display results corresponding to the username entered. Therefore, when searching for the old username A the content associated with the username B should not be shown.

Reproduction Steps:

Have an account with username A.
Create a post or comment.
Change account username to B.
Go on https://stacker.news/search and search for username A.

Actual Result:

When searching for the old username A, posts and comments of username B are being displayed.

Expected Result:

When searching for the old username A, no posts or comments should be displayed, because the user of those posts/comments has changed his username to B.

Impact:

This issue may cause confusion for users when using the search feature and compromise the privacy of the user who changed his username.

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 29 Mar

Does search persist the nym at the time of posting in the index? Because SN doesn’t preserve a history of nyms you use.

Perhaps it should persist the user ID instead

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @davidw 29 Mar

Great write-up @Onions.

Isn’t this a feature though, not a bug? Many people will change their username out of simplicity or convenience. @ek may be a good example. In some scenarios, you may not want that link to be lost. You may want people to find that content.

Perhaps when you change your username you should be asked if you want to start afresh and break the link or not.

As a ~privacy advocate, I can see why people may want to retain their trust rating rather than losing it all when creating a new nym. But you have people subscribed to posts and comments, people owning territories too… are they supposed to be burnt too when you rename your profile? Surely you’d just create a new profile to be certain of breaking the link.