Why does my Reddit profile name say "Muted"?

[Iggy Wolf]

For anyone who uses Reddit, why would one's own profile say "u/Muted_[random number string]", even though I barely use Reddit, much less create any topics or post in any thread? I once created just one topic. And only posted in that one. Since I used it since then, my profile for some reason says "muted" under my actual name. Why is that?

[metamec]

This is new to me.

If you signed up using single sign-on (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.), your account wouldn't have a /u/[username] address. Instead, it assigns a random word+number combination. So it’s possible this happened and the first word is 'Muted'. Kind of misleading if so.

I'm not sure if it's still possible to create an account without an email address, but if an email isn't linked, that would have prevented Reddit contacting you if their systems flagged your account as suspicious. If you care enough to create a ticket[support.reddithelp.com], they are usually pretty helpful.

Be wary of burning the account and creating another if there's any chance you've been flagged as suspicious. Reddit's alt account detection is second to none and additional accounts will end up quickly flagged or banned exactly like the first one.

[Kamiyama]

On reddit muting a user means they can't contact the mods. You wouldn't see this on your reddit profile though. Mods cannot change your username. (admins can)

u/whatever is your username, so that means Muted_whatever is your username. This can happen when you sign up for reddit and don't specify a name you want - it will autogenerate a lot of weird usernames.

Or if your name was considered offensive, a reddit admin may have forces a username change on you, and then it would autogenerate a name for you.