Summary
Elon Musk privately pressured Reddit CEO Steve Huffman to address content moderation after publicly criticizing Reddit on X for banning links and allegedly hosting violent content.
Shortly after Musk’s messages, Reddit imposed a 72-hour ban on the “WhitePeopleTwitter” subreddit, citing violent content, and deleted a thread Musk highlighted.
Reddit denies external influence but acknowledges evaluating reports seriously.
The controversy stirred discussions among Reddit moderators, some mocking Musk as a “giant baby.” Musk has not commented on the situation.
I know the UK sub took a hard right turn shortly before the election and it was almost an overnight change
Honestly, I don’t think Lemmy, or any other anonymous social media can really counter this. Outside of heavy moderation in the opposite direction, anyway, which doesn’t feel great.
It’s just too easy for hostile governments to spin up as many dozens of accounts as they need to argue against you, argue on your side (but badly), and simply just drown you out. It doesn’t take much of that for real people to retreat. Why would you post an opinion that you know is going to immediately get shit on by a dozen “people”?
hostile govt, mainly russ can steal or just make hundreds of acct at a time, they also easily evade reddit bans to spam.
west coast subs also got astroturfed by the right, the way they act is a goody two shoes type of comments.
City and state subs tend to be really bad, I guess because if you’re looking to influence people it’s an obvious place to start. I swore off my city subreddit after a barrage of “this is it, I’m done with the Democrats” after the local George Floyd riots knocked over some statues that were about equality. It was probably astroturfing but beyond frustrating either way.
my west coast one got turned into a conservative subs. when people were asking about things like jury duty and fare evasion/traffic tickets, they all act lik oh you shouldnt done this or that, you should know better.