When a user’s comment is flagged it is removed from view, but if you click on the user’s profile and go to recent replies you can still read the comments that have been flagged. This is a large issue as the flagging is supposed to make discourse safer from rude, and obscene comments but they are still visible.
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Hi @ClarkB. 
Is that the case as a staff user, as well as a regular user? I think it may show for staff members (admin and moderator accounts).
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I hear you, but this is arguably in feature land. You did go cruising to see the terrible content after all.
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I may disagree on this. 
There are many reasons to have a look at a user’s profile, even not knowing one or several of their posts have been flagged and thus accidentally come across potentially offensive content.
That said, it’s the first time this issue has been reported so far (as know, at least).
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I am a regular user on the discussion I was on.
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I went to their profile to flag their other messages as their account was made with the sole reason of being mean.
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When you come across such an issue, unless the other messages are really problematic, a single report flagged as “other reason” should be sufficient, as you can explain why you reported and tell that the user is a troll and their other messages are offensive as well. Then the moderators should act accordingly.
Of course, it’s in theory, and it always depends on the context and community (since you came across this issue on another forum) and flagging multiple messages may be necessary. 
Priority/Severity: Medium - While this bug doesn’t break functionality, it contradicts the purpose of flagging, potentially allowing inappropriate content to remain accessible.
Platform: Tested on a desktop, OS: Windows 10, Browser: Google Chrome.
Description: In Discourse, when a user’s comment is flagged, it gets removed from the regular topic view, indicating that the flagging function is working as expected. However, by navigating to the offending user’s profile and checking their ‘Recent Replies’, the flagged comment remains visible despite the flag. This behavior contradicts the intended purpose of flagging, as it should make a discourse safer from rude and obscene comments.
Expected Result: Flagged comments should be hidden from all user views, including the ‘Recent Replies’ section in the user profile, except for admin or moderator views.
Actual Result: Flagged comments are hidden from the regular topic view, but still visible under ‘Recent Replies’ on the user’s profile page.
Reproducible Steps:
- Login as Test User 1 and create a post or comment.
- Logout from Test User 1 and login as Test User 2.
- Navigate to the post created by Test User 1 and flag it.
- Confirm that the post is no longer visible in the topic view (you can check this by logging in as a third Test User 3).
- Still logged in as Test User 3, navigate to Test User 1’s profile.
- Click on ‘Activity’, then on ‘Replies’ from the dropdown.
- Check for the flagged post in this section.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: The persistence of posts hidden by flags are a bane to our community
I am mentioning this is feature land cause it needs to be thought through.
- As an admin/mod … should you see the content there?
- If no, then we need to link that to the flags, if yes we probably want to link it to the flags anyway?
If we simply suppress, then moderators end up suffering here for no good reason, they need full context when they look at a user and if you start hiding things from them you are creating more pointless work.
As end user… I am OK with suppressing. But then the feature question is “how much do we suppress”? Just remove it from the list seems simplest to me.
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The content also shows up in the og and twitter description meta tags in the link to the post. This means anyone linking to the post on an external website can still see the content.
We’ve noticed this as well, mentioned in this topic with a similar issue:
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Definitely a bug and not a feature. Lol
Simple imho. Do it by position. Mod/admins can already see things like hidden posts etc… So only needs to be fixed for non admin/mod users to achieve parity.
Can’t do much about cached content on other platforms or even a Google search.
It’s actively generated by discourse after the post is hidden.