Hi crinrict
Thank you and MapleSimmer for testing and finding this issue is tied to a user's EA privacy settings for their account. Your post with the pictures of how to locate and change these settings worked to solve the issue for a friend who had suddenly turned anonymous for me, yet he could still see me. My settings were for friends but his were not. He didn't even know how to reach that setting through the app but now we are back to normal.
By virtue of the fact this thread is still shown as under investigation, I hope this change is not yet set in stone. If it is, EA needs to do a post in the info hub, or a gallery post of some sort so simmers aren't plagued with the inconvenience this change has caused. I was more upset by this change for him because when he once again became visible to me, I saw he had lost almost all of his followers. If one doesn't recognize the avatar of the creator to put a name to it for doing a general gallery search, then the alternative is to unfollow. I unfollowed someone for this very reason. All I could remember was that it was a former Sim Guru that I had followed to download a sim from at a later date. I did not recall the name and after unsuccessfully trying a few out just went the unfollow route.
I also find it completely ridiculous that Maxis is now showing as anonymous with no shared builds, although a gallery search will reveal builds. I also think there should be a separate option for the gallery privacy settings, rather than having it tied to profile details. A simmer should be able to leave their profile private if they so desire but be visible on the gallery for builds they care to share.
Perhaps part of this post is feedback but I simply had to thank you for sharing your testing results which fixed an issue my friend and I had been so perplexed by. It is greatly appreciated.
