Elon Musk’s greetings made many Reddit users angry.
Elon Musk’s greetings at Donald Trump’s inauguration were the final straw for many Reddit moderators. Ios/Ropi
So far, dozens of Reddit Discussion Areas, or subreddits, have begun to block linking to messaging service X. In addition, hundreds of other Discussion Areas are discussing or voting on blocking or other similar actions, news Engadget.
Linking to X’s publications and content has been blocked by both large and small Discussion Areas on Reddit. Among the largest is the Formula 1-themed area with almost five million users r/formula1whose maintenance says they block X’s contents in the discussion area.
In its press release, the maintenance calls on journalists, content producers, photographers and F1 influencers to make their content available on platforms other than X, which the maintenance primarily calls by its former Twitter name.
Ylläpito says that they have previously preferred Bluesky, which does not force viewers to log in and which “does not suffer from other various problems concerning Twitter”. For example, the significant increase in the number of bots and the prioritization of publications by paying users are mentioned as problems. The block is initially a temporary experiment, but the maintenance hopes that it will encourage everyone to publish their content on other platforms, as the block will later be made permanent.
Dissatisfaction with Musk
According to Engadget, the Reddit campaign has at least partially taken off with the decision of the r/newjersey area. Its maintenance started blocking on Tuesday with accompanying words “F**k this guy.” The publication was accompanied by a picture of Elon Musk, who at Donald Trump’s inauguration made a hand gesture to the audience that was considered a Nazi salute twice during his speech.
Other areas of discussion that joined the X ban are, for example, the cartoon topic with 2.7 million users r/comics3.8 million user pc game themed r/pcgaming and what calls itself Reddit’s largest military-related discussion area, with just under half a million users r/Military.
The maintenance of r/comics justifies its decision with Elon Musk’s Nazi salutes and X publications, where he has brought up the ideology of white supremacy. R/pcgaming, on the other hand, highlights X’s increased hate speech and decreased moderation. In their release, the maintenance of r/pcgaming states that it is not about censorship, as screenshots are still allowed. Instead, you no longer want to route network traffic to X from the discussion area.
Also with a Finnish theme in the r/Finland area X-links are automatically blocked. The reason is said to be that X supports and always brings out more hateful ideologies, such as neo-Nazism.
Instead, with a bigger one The issue has been proposed in the r/Suomi discussion areabut at least not yet officially aligned.
The moderator of the New Jersey discussion area commented to Engadget that the intention was not to start any trend, but they are happy if their announcement has sparked a conversation about the role of social media. According to them, Reddit has always been a place where each community can decide for themselves about such things.