cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27463109
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 salutegiving 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
Spez being Elon’s bitch is the least surprising thing I’ll read all week. We already knew it was happening, but confirmation is useful for those not already in the know.
Why anyone of any significant level of intelligence is still on Reddit is the real mystery.
People seem to really cling to their comforts. Even switching to Mastadon was too hard for people and now a bunch of the normies are all on Bluesky while we’re all watching from the fediverse for the enshittification cycle to repeat.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t used reddit even once since I purged it, I have, but I know better than to invest time and effort upvoting, sharing content, and building community in someone else’s clubhouse when I know he’s an asshole.
And of course spez just bent over, because money.
Spez bent over because they were both on that island but Elon has pictures.
“Spank me harder daddy musk”
I hope the r/buyfromeu moderators see this and stop opposing the Lemmy platform.
The mods are sad little serfs on a little hill, of course they won’t.
In what sense are they exposing it? Do they think they get more engagement on reddit?
They’ve been ignoring every request to have a link to this community in their sidebar
Which is ironic, given that Reddit is American, the evil at its C-level, and that they get money from you using their platform.
Not so BuyEuropean of them (:
Definitely
FrEeDoM oF sPeEcH
Would Lemmy be able to resist this kind of influence better than Reddit? It feels like Lemmy server admins/owners would be even more susceptible to legal threats. Unless maybe they are in a different country.
Not sure what the state of backup / migration is on Lemmy (my guess is unfortunately “not great”) but if a server admin bans a community they can just open a new one on another server (or host their own).
Shit clings together
