Subreddits Are Starting to Ban Links to X

While the debate rages on over whether Elon Musk performed a Nazi salute at an inaugural event, many Reddit communities have decided to go ahead and ban links to X, including some with millions of members. Some of largest subreddits involved are sports communities, including r/NBA, which has 15 million subscribers, and r/NFL, which has 12 million, the Washington Post reports. The BBC notes that "subreddits are almost always run by fans," so the decisions don't mean the leagues are protesting Musk.

"We have reached this decision after taking recent events and strong sentiment from our community into account," r/NBA moderators said. "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." The BBC reports that at least 100 subreddits have banned links to X, including at least 60 with more than 100,000 members. Another one of the largest is women's issues subreddit r/TwoXChromosomes, which has 14 million subscribers. Others include r/Christianity, r/nursing, r/military, and state-focused groups including r/NewJersey, r/Massachusetts, and r/Georgia.

Some users described the bans as a way to show "zero tolerance" for Nazism, while others said the gesture was the last straw after years of concerns about Musk and his platform, the New York Times reports. "There's no doubt that over the past years Twitter has become a low-quality source: the login requirements, the flood of bots, the prioritization of content from paying users and promotion of sensationalist content," moderators at r/formula1 said, announcing a ban for a "trial period." A Reddit spokeswoman said banning X links is not company policy, but communities are free to make their own rules, the Times reports. (More Elon Musk stories.)