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Reddit sites with millions of followers ban links to X, Twitter after Elon Musk inauguration salute

More than 100 subreddits serving millions of users banned people from posting Twitter links on Reddit days after the Elon Musk hand gesture.

C. A. Bridges   Paste BN NETWORK - Florida
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  • Inauguration Day was Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. Donald Trump was sworn in as 47th president of the US, with Melania Trump as first lady.

It could have been a Nazi "Sieg heil!" salute. It could have been a harmless, exuberant gesture, as he's been known to do. It could have been Elon Musk deliberately making a joke to provoke just the outrage that it received.

But the hand gestures that megabillionaire Musk, Donald Trump’s pick for administration efficiency advisor, made at the Inauguration Day rally on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025 — extending his arm and hand, twice — have caused moderators in some of Reddit's biggest communities to ban all links to his social media site X, formerly Twitter, in protest.

Musk responded with scorn to the accusations on X. "Frankly, they need better dirty tricks," he said Monday night. "The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired."

Supporters and the Anti-Defamation League have given him the benefit of the doubt, while many historians and right-wing extremists were quick to claim it definitely was a Nazi Germany reference.

“Did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler ...” right-wing commentator Evan Kilgore posted on X. “We are so back.”

More than 100 communities or “subreddits” serving millions of users in the popular forum website have banned users from posting links to X. While the main site has not issued a ban, volunteer moderators of the subreddits can modify or issue their own rules within their respective forums, a Reddit spokesperson told Paste BN on Wednesday, Jan. 22.

Reddit was listed as the 8th most popular website in the world in December 2024, according to analytics site similarweb.com, right behind Wikipedia.

Subreddits such as Formula 1, NBA, Disneyland ban X links because of Elon Musk

The unofficial Formula 1 subreddit announced on Tuesday that it was banning all "Twitter/X” content on the sub, with the exception of "screenshots of relevant posts by teams, drivers & F1 that are not available on any other platform." The r/NFL subreddit followed suit.

Users in sports subreddits r/LiverpoolFC and r/CHIBears also proposed X bans, citing a misalignment in values, while other sports mods have locked or deleted similar proposals. Mods in a discussion about it in r/FloridaGators said Wednesday they were discussing it internally first.

The mods at r/NASCAR admitted Tuesday it was a highly charged subject but said that X has always been a "top source of breaking news and content" for the subreddit and asked users to weigh in.

Several subreddits went even further, banning links to or screenshots from both X and all Meta services such as Facebook, Instagram and Threads, in reaction to Musk's gesture, allegations that he encourages and retweets hate speech and pro-Nazi content, and the recent Meta decision to stop fact-checking and relax moderation.

The subreddit /r/TwoXChromosomes, a women's issues community with 14 million members, blocked all of that Wednesday morning. The Disneyland subreddit (1.4 million members) did the same, as did the r/NBA fan forum (15 million members).

"We have reached this decision after taking recent events and strong sentiment from our community into account," the /r/NBA moderators said in a post. "While we try our best to stay neutral and apolitical, we do not believe taking a stance against Nazi symbolism is or should be a political issue. Hate speech and the promotion of it has never been tolerated in our community.

Some moderators were more direct.

"Last night, at Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and known alt-right personality, showed the world who he truly is, and performed a full Sieg Heil Nazi salute not once, but twice," reads a post on video game fan subreddit /r/Destiny2, which has 910,000 members. "The man is without a doubt, a neo-Nazi."

The /r/antiwork subreddit, with 2.9 million members, banned links to X, all Meta platforms, and all Chinese-based social media such as TikTok and Rednote.

Many of the moderators put it to a vote or discussion among members. The mods of the good-news subreddit r/MadeMeSmile posted to its 11 million members, "Would it make you smile if we banned all links to Twitter?" While the moderators have not yet announced a decision as of Thursday, Jan. 23, comments on the post, liked 115,000 times as of Thursday morning, were overwhelmingly positive.

In the r/DND subreddit, mods kicked off a spirited discussion before announcing they would decide as a team.

"Also, thanks for helping us draw all the sh--heads out of the woodwork so they can get banned," they said.

Twitter link bans already in place in some subreddits on Reddit social media platform

Some subreddits took the opportunity to point out that they'd been banning Twitter links already.

"We've seen a lot of people calling for us to ban X on this subreddit," said the mods for r/TaylorSwift, "so we wanted to be very clear that we don't allow links from X to be submitted, and we haven't for a long time."

Did Reddit ban links to X, formerly known as Twitter?

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Reddit, the social networking platform that hosts these subreddits, said in a statement the company has "no ban on X links – there are still plenty of X links on Reddit."

Reddit is made up of thousands of subreddits, each addressing a different topic or fandom, and those are governed by unpaid volunteer moderators who can determine what is allowed in their realms and what is not.

"Notably, many Reddit communities also prohibit Reddit links," that statement reads. "Reddit has a longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of association."

Not all Redditors were on board with the idea.

"I think it's pathetically cringe and a perfect example of why reddit is such a laughing stock to people in the real world," said user SprinklesMore8471 in a discussion on r/AskReddit.

Which subreddits are banning links to X, formerly Twitter?

A few of the notable subreddits that have banned links to X include:

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