Let me see my mutuals with private profiles

[[AP] Will]

Let's say I search for someone on Steam who has a private profile. They come up, underneath their name, 'you have three friends in common'. But when I click on it, it won't let me see who! Why tell me in the first place and have a link, then?

As such the only way to find out which mutuals you have is to painstakingly go through all of your friends and see if they appear on their friendlists. This obviously takes significantly longer and I don't see why you can't just see right off the bat.

It's not the biggest thing in the world but it's been a little niggle for so long now.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

If you are not their friend, why are you supposed to be privy to that info? Simple solution is to add them as a friend and find out.

[B l u e b e r r y P o p t a r t]

It might be a pain but you can just add said person to find out and then delete or keep as a friend.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Rather than showing you, a better solution would be, as you say, to not tell you in the first place. The person's friends list is private, after all.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

It is exactly the same as the market is after Valve changed it so you can't click on the avatars to see the sellers profile.

[ErickaUnlimited]

They're private for a reason. This extends to their friends list as well.

[Radene]

Well...let me play the devil's advocate here.

You can already find those mutual friends - as long as you're willing to check your own friends' friendlists and see which ones this mysterious person with the private profile shows up on.

So on that note, showing which friends you have in common is simply information you already have the means of obtaining, just a few hoops removed.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Originally posted by Radene:

Well...let me play the devil's advocate here.

You can already find those mutual friends - as long as you're willing to check your own friends' friendlists and see which ones this mysterious person with the private profile shows up on.

So on that note, showing which friends you have in common is simply information you already have the means of obtaining, just a few hoops removed.

I'd rather be a human advocate than the devil's.

"Hoops" are important. Like a fence or a lock, hoops don't stop really dedicated stalkers, but they deter enough to have value. There's probably a fair bit of data out there about each of us that is theoretically publicly discoverable; that doesn't mean it's a good idea to publish it all in a nice neat format for everyone to see.

[Radene]

Originally posted by Gus the Crocodile:

Originally posted by Radene:

Well...let me play the devil's advocate here.

You can already find those mutual friends - as long as you're willing to check your own friends' friendlists and see which ones this mysterious person with the private profile shows up on.

So on that note, showing which friends you have in common is simply information you already have the means of obtaining, just a few hoops removed.

I'd rather be a human advocate than the devil's.

"Hoops" are important. Like a fence or a lock, hoops don't stop really dedicated stalkers, but they deter enough to have value. There's probably a fair bit of data out there about each of us that is theoretically publicly discoverable; that doesn't mean it's a good idea to publish it all in a nice neat format for everyone to see.

No, my point isn't that it's "theoretically" discoverable. It's very practically discoverable, in a rather short time, too, simply by using ctrl+F and without straying from Steam itself; without depending on a third party database.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Which changes nothing about my point. People having to do work to get around privacy options, even if that privacy is not perfect, is not a problem that needs solving.

[Radene]

Originally posted by Gus the Crocodile:

Which changes nothing about my point. People having to do work to get around privacy options, even if that privacy is not perfect, is not a problem that needs solving.

It's not even a problem. My point is that what the OP is suggesting can already be done either way.

[Gus the Crocodile]

That's what Will said in the original post, yes.