Remove author link with child theme

The files inside of the ‘inc’ folder are not templates and cannot be overridden by using the technique to override a template. You need to look at the function you want to override, find where it’s called in the parent theme and go from there. Once you’re at that stage I can help you.

Oh, can I just pop the modified version in the functions.php in the child theme, then? The function is twentyseventeen_posted_on() called from template-parts/post/content.php line 26 in latest versions.

Full text is this:

function twentyseventeen_posted_on() {

	// Get the author name; wrap it in a link.
	$byline = sprintf(
		/* translators: %s: post author */
		__( 'by %s', 'twentyseventeen' ),
		'<span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="' . esc_url( get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) ) ) . '">' . get_the_author() . '</a></span>'
	);

	// Finally, let's write all of this to the page.
	echo '<span class="posted-on">' . twentyseventeen_time_link() . '</span><span class="byline"> ' . $byline . '</span>';
}

Which file was this in?

The function is in twentyseventeen/inc/template-tags.php, starting on line 12.

I found it, template-tags.php.

So, yes you can copy the function and paste it into your Child Theme functions.php file because it has this bit of code:

if ( ! function_exists( 'twentyseventeen_posted_on' ) ) :

...

If it didn’t have that conditional statement then your site would break.

Ok, thank you very much for your help.

I would love just remove the link, because the URL is showing the actual user name, instead of the display name, to any hacker that happens by and I find that much less than secure. I would also be happy with showing the display name in the URL.
Is there a simple way to do either of these in the child site? Perhaps if I change ID to ??
Thanks so much
M