Nearly two months ago, Elon Musk went on a public crusade against Reddit.
On X, he said it was “insane” that subreddits were blocking links to the platform in protest of him appearing to give a Nazi salute giving repeated Nazi salutes. A few days later, he posted that Reddit users advocating for violence against Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees had “broken the law.”
As it turns out, Musk wasn’t only using his X platform to call out content on Reddit. He was also privately messaging Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, according to people familiar with the matter.
Shortly after the two CEOs exchanged text messages, Reddit enacted a 72-hour ban on the “WhitePeopleTwitter” subreddit that hosted the thread about DOGE employees, citing the “prevalence of violent content.” The specific thread Musk shared on X was also deleted, including hundreds of comments that didn’t call for violence or doxxing. (So far, Reddit doesn’t appear to have intervened in any moderator decisions to ban X links from the subreddits they oversee.)
When asked about Musk and Huffman’s correspondence, Reddit spokesperson Gina Antonini sent the following statement: “We take any report of Reddit policy violations seriously, whether on Reddit directly or through other public or private means. We will evaluate content reported to us and take action if violating.” Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The news of Musk’s outreach to Huffman quickly made its way to some of Reddit’s moderators, who discussed it together on Discord. After one wrote, “Musk is coming for /r/Comics,” which was one of the subreddits that was banning links to X, another responded by calling him a “giant baby,” according to screenshots of the conversation that were shared with me.
EDIT: minor correction up top after y’all gave the text a SolidShake
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This is why I joined Lemmy. I hope it gets big soon. Best regards from the Netherlands.
Welcome, glad you are here! Don’t expect an explosion, but we have been getting a steady stream of new faces, since Reddit can’t seem to avoid making their site worse every month.
Have fun and help make Lemmy a cool and inviting place to hang out online.
This is the last platform IMO (well activitypub anyway). Everything else is a stop gap.
Welcome to Lemmy, here are a few pointers to help you settle in
It feels quite big to me already.
Good to see you’re still around!
Welcome and enjoy!
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Can you edit this and remove “appearing to give a Nazi salute” and just say “gave a Nazi salute”
Done.
Nice
They buy our votes, they buy our laws, A system twisted by their claws. Billionaires with fascist dreams, Leverage power through broken seams.
With every dollar, they seal the gate, To keep us bound, to crush our state. Freedom’s just a word they own, A throne they sit on, all alone.
Did you just write a poem? Nice!
Reddit has been having server issues right around when this article was first posted there and gained over 32k upvotes. It has now been removed by the moderators, to the surprise of nobody.
This is why I’m on Lemmy/activityhub.
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Think reddit is afraid of a little super smash bros?
