I don’t do social media other then the Dope but I read a few reddit forums and wanted to post my contributions. It was easy to sign up as it used my Google account and gmail address. I posted my first reply to reddit and to my consternation my assigned name is “Signal Pirate” with some numbers. WTF? It didn’t even ask for a user name during the sign up.
If I go to my profile there is a section to add a display name and it states it will not change my actual user name. I put it something less polarizing. But there is no “save changes” button and it did not do anything.
Seeing as you’ve not actually used your account, the easiest method is just to create a new account.
They try to trick you into thinking you need an email to sign up, but you can just click “Next” without including any email address, and then you’ll be able to come up with your own username.
The majority of Redditors do not have an email address on file. It wasn’t even an option for years. If you must, you can always add an email account at some later date.
You can’t. Once you’ve picked a username and completed the signup process, you’re stuck with it. I guess Reddit can change this policy in the future if they wanted to, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Now that is weird. I just tried making a throwaway account to test this, and the site refused to let me continue if I didn’t specify a username. On the side of the signup panel they showed a list of randomly generated name suggestions like “Standard-Battle-6612” and “Adventurous-Emu-3876”, similar to how you got slapped with “Signal Pirate-[numbers]”.
Since you’ve only made one reply from that Reddit account so far, I second BigT’s suggestion to just abandon it and make a new one, and be careful to enter your preferred name this time.
I deleted the account. I was worried I got hijacked by someone. The Signal Pirate name was indeed off to the right when I signed up but I didn’t pay any attention to it. Somehow I must have authorized it.
Oddly, I just went through this this morning. I had to reinstall reddit on my phone, and forgot which google account I had used for my reddit account. So I picked the wrong one and created a new account. If it gave me the option to pick a username, I didn’t see it anywhere! So, yeah, try it on a phone (Android, at least) and use OAuth, and you’ll see what I mean.
I don’t recommend this. If you ever need to reset your password, you’ll need it associated with an email address.
Which is why I said they could add the email address later. But, right now, it makes more sense to skip all that to bypass whatever didn’t allow them to choose a username before.
I also note that, if you use a password manager, especially one that that stores your passwords in the cloud, this is much less of an issue. The only password you ever need to remember is the password to your password manager. I’ve been using the one built into Chrome for a while.
I normally use a third-party app (Boost for Reddit), but it doesn’t allow me to create new accounts. I downloaded the official first-party Reddit app to test out your theory, and it does let me make an account, but if I leave the username field blank it greys out the “Continue” button and stops me from progressing, just as the website version does.
This is on an Android phone, too. Worst part is, they block screenshots from within the app so I can’t even show proof of it.
I chose to sign up with email, using a throwaway Yahoo email address. I entered a password that met their requirements, but left the username field blank, and that’s where I met the roadblock.
I also saw the option to sign up with Google (I guess that’s what you mean by OAuthing a Google account), but I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my Google account credentials with them.
It’s entirely possible you’re right about me being able to sign up without a username had I gone the Google route but, uh, I’ll just take your word for it instead of finding out for myself.
Right, OAuth is a protocol that allows you to sign in using your google account, but without sharing your google credentials with them. Effectively, you tell google that you want them to be able to identify you, and google sends them a one-off code. They can use that code to get basic ID info, like name and email address. One can also use oauth to authorize greater permissions - like access to your email - but Reddit doesn’t request those permissions. (Some apps can use these advanced permissions to do things like manage your calendar or scan your email for receipts or travel dates and catalog those for you.)
Anyway, you shouldn’t fear using oauth as long as you’re comfortable with them having fairly basic identifying info (And from going through it on a laptop, it looks like they’re only requesting email address and open profile id, so pretty minimal data.)
