A protest movement has sprung up on Reddit after Elon Musk, the owner of X, made a hand gesture on Monday that many people claimed looked like a Nazi salute.
Moderators in more than 50 subreddit groups have subsequently declared that connections from X, formerly Twitter, would no longer be permitted in new posts and comments, according to NBC News. There are at least 40 million members in the protesting communities, which range in size from hundreds to millions. Only a small percentage of these individuals are usually active, especially in larger or older subreddits. The platform has about 100,000 active subreddits.
The salute event, which occurred at a rally after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, was expressly brought up by moderators in numerous postings announcing the new regulations.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and well-known alt-right figure, performed the full Sieg Heil Nazi salute twice during Donald Trump’s inauguration last night, according to an announcement posted in the Destiny 2 subreddit, an online gaming community with over 900,000 members. Nazis are not tolerated at r/destiny2. Anyone who spreads hate speech or Nazi philosophy has been and always will be immediately banned without the possibility of appeal.
Musk praised the crowd for helping make the 2024 election happen and stated that it truly mattered during his statement at the post-inauguration event. He then put his right hand on his chest and held out his arm at an upward angle, palm down. “My heart goes out to you,” he remarked after turning around and making the same motion. The future of civilization is guaranteed because of you.
Musk has called claims that he gave the Nazi salute “dirty tricks and pure propaganda.” Musk responded with an emoji of laughter when the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights antisemitism, claimed that Musk had performed an embarrassing gesture that wasn’t a Nazi salute.
The political climate on X, including unmoderated hate speech and pro-Nazi content, as well as Musk’s personal support of far-right political figures and viewpoints, were mentioned in some of the other subreddit announcement postings. A few announcements also mentioned that X postings can no longer be seen without checking in. Posting screenshots of posts on X is still permitted, according to a number of the communities.
One significant strategy to limit Musk’s platform’s spread across participating Reddit groups may be to ban links to X in sizable subreddits. Some moderators talked about how the ban was intended to persuade prominent members of their communities to stop posting on X altogether.
Discussions over whether to ban X links are presently taking place in dozens of different subreddits. After holding a debate thread, the 4.8 million-member Formula One racing subreddit temporarily restricted X links with the goal of permanently banning them.
Our primary issue with a complete ban is that, despite the fact that many F1 journalists have joined Bluesky, teams, drivers, and FOM have not, according to the release. Formula One Management, or FOM, is one of the top platforms that can be used instead of X. However, we also understand that it’s a chicken-or-egg situation, and as a community of nearly 5 million people, we likely have a significant impact on the choice of native F1 news source.
Volunteer moderators who are not connected to the platform’s owner corporation manage subreddits. Similar protest actions, including one in favor of net neutrality, have been carried out by subreddits in the past.
Although connections to X were not commonly posted in the first place, some of the subreddits agreed that the ban was merely symbolic.
“I recognize that this is essentially just virtue signaling,” a moderator for a subreddit regarding the video game Baldur’s Gate 3, which has more than 180,000 members, commented. However, virtue signaling is the least I can do if someone begins to perform Nazi salutes during a supposedly first-world nation’s presidential inauguration.
A Reddit representative explained in a statement that numerous X links are still being uploaded on the network, despite the company not having banned them.
According to the statement, Reddit has a long history of supporting freedom of association and speech.
Links to X are prohibited in a variety of subreddits. Communities based in the U.S. states of New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Georgia are among them, as are American cities like Salt Lake City, Utah, and Buffalo, New York, as well as foreign cities like Exeter, UK, and London, Canada. They also have communities for sports teams, bands, music genres, video games, reality TV, and even some adult communities that display nudity.
With 15 million members, the NBA community for professional basketball is one of the biggest subreddits that has prohibited links to X. Based on comments from community members, administrators also removed links to Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the same post, along with any other social networking site that requires users to log in in order to view messages.
The announcement stated, “We have made this decision after considering recent events and strong sentiment from our community.” We do not think opposing Nazi symbols is or should be a political issue, despite our best efforts to remain impartial and apolitical. In our community, hate speech and its propagation have never been accepted.
According to the post, screenshots of postings on X will not be permitted on the NBA subreddit either. The consequences of this policy will be tracked and may vary. According to the post, the choice was also taken to persuade content producers and journalists to go to other platforms, such Bluesky.