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.
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Wasn’t Elon Musk the self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”? Turns out it was the “free speech abolitionist” after all.
It means Elon gets free speech, not any of us. Elon is free to threaten a Judges daughter with no ramifications.
The extreme right wing in the US, has always had things they claim to revere, but don’t actually believe in.
- Free Speech
- Free Markets
- Democracy
- The Constitution
Probably more
- families
- children’s safety
- voting rights
- the economy
- the well-being of working class people
- peace
- morality
- women’s safety
- corruption
- technology
- infrastructure
- religion, in that it is only a tool to further their ends and they will interpret religious scripture at their own discretion and opinion
- education
- healthcare
There’s only two things they do care about, capital and power. They are white supremacists and Christian nationalists second, capitalists and oligarchs first.
It’s about power. They can lie and get away with it, they can break rules and get away with it.
Everything they do should be viewed through the lens of power relations and control through power. They will say whatever is worthwhile for them to say to gain more power. That’s it, that’s all, that’s all it’s ever been. Calling them hypocrites does nothing, they love that we get mad about it. Because it means they have power over us.
To quote a rando from (retch) reddit:
There’s a russian adage about people dumbfounded by how people will baldfaced lie obvious falsehoods: They don’t lie to deceive you, they lie to INSULT you: it’s a statement “I can insult you this way and you can’t do anything about it”
Pro-“life” (actually just pro-“birth”)
Pro forced birth.
They call themselves conservatives, but they’re radicals (the polar opposite) through and through.
Apparently free speech absolutist means “absolutely no free speech” according to fElon.
Technically true /s
Anyone who says they are a “free speech absolutist” is a liar or a fool.
its the same people whoa re anti-woke, they are the wokest people out there.
It still blows my mind that he has this reputation. His OWN damn policy was and still is “Freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” Which is blatantly censorship and suppression lol. I cannot grasp how someone could see that and be like “free speech is back!!!”
Elon is a pussy afraid of words like the rest of the Maga crowd.
I mean…fuck both of em.
Ew. No, thanks.
Well, tie them up like Butch and Marcellus Wallace and call Zed. I’ll get the gimp.
Well well well
And that’s how I finally made an account here
Welcome! I came over during the api shutdown, I mained lemmy for a year, waffled back and forth the last few months. Reddit is such garbage, I dont even recognize it anymore. Its just those few niche subs that got me back but its not worth it.
Same but I swapped instances recently to have access to the piracy community.
Sadly there is still no good replacement for /r/steroids and /r/drugs over here. Maybe I need to take things into my own hands, but I’m not really interested in building up these communities from the ground up.
same here.
Me, too. Welcome! I love the Fediverse. 💕
There is still a few niche subreddits I “need” to visit Reddit for, but I at least try to stay away from /r/all and browse Lemmy instead
Much better to be kinda effective and it works for you than try to be perfect and fail :)
Spez has always been a alt-right coward.
I am not convinced that the image I recently saw of an extraordinarily strangely shaped human actually WAS Spez, but if it is, he needs to get some plastic surgery so he doesn’t frighten children.
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This is what brought me to lemmy after getting threatened to be banned for up voting anti trump and musk post. Fuck trump, fuck musk and fuck spez. Fucking goofs.
This is what brought me to lemmy
Samsies. Reddit is bending the knee to big money
Yeah I refuse to support nazi supporters. Spez has done some dumb shit over the years but this was the final straw. I’ve only been here about a week but it already seems like a much better environment.
Same, I started looking for alternatives after getting threatened for upvoting. What actually pushed me to join here though was getting a three day ban. Both times they falsely claimed it was for “violent content”. Apparently wrongthink is violence.
Welcome! Lemmy is a breath of fresh air. 💕
Thanks, I’ve really been enjoying it. I was on redd it for about 12 years and it won’t be missed.
14 years invested at Reddit and the latest bans and bs moderation was the last straw for me. Spent a whole day hand deleting all of my comments and posts and subsequently my account. Fuck Spez. Asskisser and right wing sympathetic.
That’s a long time, but we can’t stop someone else from being a spineless fuck so best to move on. With enough of us leaving hopefully they’ll start to feel it.
im glad at least the 10years ive been using ublock origin denying them ads at least.
they probably do it with anti-israeli posts too, right now its an all time high. and the noise of anti-dem/biden posts suddenly disappeared over the gaza conflict.
Reddit, or at least the subs I frequented, is a cesspool of russian trolls and bots. I made the apparent mistake of calling a couple of trolls out in the r/Europe sub and asked why they weren’t in Kursk, and pffft…permanent ban from all of reddit for “inciting violence”. I think my blood pressure has improved since then, tbh.
That sounds like the_donald applied to the whole site.
I never actually visited that sub, but I heard it alluded to enough to loathe it…
It was legitimately funny, when it was still a joke. The memes were good. There was no way that idiot was going to be a serious contender. It was all in good fun.
At least until someone would say, “you know this is just a joke, right?” Any kind of self-awareness was banned within seconds. Now I don’t know if you’re familiar with volunteer moderators, but it’s pretty rare that they catch that kind of volume 24 hours a day within seconds.
I fully believe there were state-level troll farms operated by a hostile foreign government moderating that subreddit.
… and now they’re applying that to the entire site.
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.
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.
west coast subs also got astroturfed by the right, the way they act is a goody two shoes type of comments.
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conservatives subs being the obvious one. WOrldnews is co-opted by israeli trolls mostly. i see them leak into pics alot so i just report them. r/politics is half and half.
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That would not surprise me in the slightest. Drumph had a lot of help, starting with those fucking “actors” who cheered him as he descended the golden elevator. He certainly didn’t get there based on merit LOL.
MSM, SOCIAL media practically made him on the news 24/7 for the last, the only time people had clarity from his madness was when mr luigi shot the CEO, and the MSMs and social media was freaking out that the class war is finally gaining attention against them, then they reorientated themselves and the masses were re-distracted again.
Good thing there are no Russian bots on Lemmy.
Not sure about bots, but I’ve certainly encountered some trolls. And some people grafted to Elmo’s starfish. At least they aren’t a protected species here…
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…or into a pink mist wafting gently in the morning breeze…
they seem to invade the political communities more.
i think 2 years ago, someone posted that half reddit comments were subs, politics and news probably is made a large percentage of trolls. alot of people were/including me were criticizing some of news/article sources as being from pure russian backed sources.
Fuck you spez!
So Mr Free Speech just forced a 3rd party to restrict free speech like he does on his free speech platform. Fucking hypocrite.
AND here’s proof /u/spez is a fucking pussy.
Fuck spez. Reddit is bullshit now because of that garbage person.
TBH, it’s been bullshit for years.
Free speech = using slurs and peddling conspiracy theories
And that’s why I’m no longer on Reddit.
Me too, brother
Ditto
Imagine being literally the richest man on earth and using your influence to delete mean comments that people wrote about you on the internet.
It’s not about money, it’s about power and control.
Job security for the rest of his life.
Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause
chicksbros dig dudes with money.Yeah. Instead of like, you know, maybe…improving his behaviour…
I haven’t been to reddit since it happened, I imagine many others did the same.
I’ve been trying to switch but it’s just so dead over here. We need more posters to make the jump
Really? It was less active than Reddit about a year ago, but now it’s not that different in terms of how often the front page changes. Browse by all and just block whichever instances and communities you don’t want to see. I’d much rather have fewer comments than most of them being bots and children spamming dumb shit.
Yeah, right? The only thing I miss here are highly specific communities. But then again I might create them myself at some point
You don’t miss seeing 37 puns at the top of every comment thread!?
its mostly trump propaganda now on the front page, about 95%. worst now is subs like r/conservative has been on the front page months. negative trump news, ie his gaffes are propaganda the same thing MSM pushed last year. at least on r/all you can block any sub you dont wish to see.
Fine for me. Don’t need a lot of troll bots and junk opinions from the uninformed. 🤷♂️
Or reposts
Or all the inane/AI generated ragebait wall of texts on AITA and the like
AITAh was always fake story even before the AI came on board. around 90% were fake, the way you can tell is how proposterous some of the story sounds.
Oh definitely, the amount just has been compounded since the introduction of AI to consumers
You gotta Field of Dreams it; post in communities you want to see liven up and people will follow, it just takes time.
I was trying to describe the plot of Field of Dreams just the other day.
A guy builds a baseball field in his corn field so that ghost players will come and play games there.
Their response was: The 90 were weird. And I had to agree. I’m gonna have to watch the movie again to figure out why I liked it so much.
I’ve been here since Apigate. It’s getting more active, but not the same. However, I’ve found myself actually scrolling less due to the less content, which has been a good thing for my mental health.
And the obligatory F Spez, F Elon.
There’s less posts sure, but when I left last year so much of Reddits front page content was just badly reposted bot garbage anyway.
There were some specific communities where there we enough active real people posted to keep it interesting, but I could tell then where it was going, and as far as I can tell I wasn’t wrong.
Artificially created content to force or fake engagement to drive ad sales isn’t any less dead than here.
Also the fact that you’re giving your content up for free so spez can lock it behind paywalls is just insane.
My own experience has been the opposite, I’ve gotten more engagement in my short time here than in the last year or two on reddit. Plus no one here is trying to ban my account every time I point out trump/ musk is a big ol poopy pants.
its not so much as the reporting, but the good-two-shoes comment and trolls. trying to bait you into a argument with "both sides, and whataboutism, or bringing up only left-bashing comments.
Flying Squid has disappeared the past month. Very active user. I am worried.
With the previous frequency of comments/posts, and everything else going on, I hope flyingsquid is taking the time to relax.
He recently moved apparently, so probably just busy with life stuff?
Oh that’s good to know. I know there were health issues. That concerned me. He’ll be back later then I’m sure.
He achieved the new american dream of leaving the US. Hopefully he’ll resume posting again once he’s settled.
I’ve had him blocked for a while and it is still plenty active here for me.
Moved to Britain with the family. Probably busy and back posting when things have settled
I mean. He might just be flying around somewhere.
Removed by mod
Reddit didn’t become a giant in one day either. The more people you tell about lemmy the more people will use it.
yea it dint, not until trumps 1st term, then reddit just ballooned out of control since then, reporting became more sensitive(it got easier to get banned because of the politics made people to sensitive, and they can easily miconstrue your comments. for the longest time i was on niche subs, then politics became so prominent around '16-20.
I have to use all for browsing and just block communities and instances that I don’t care about.
Sort by new! There’s a flood of fresh posts all the time and if you upvote/comment the ones you like they end up at the top of other people’s active feed with your comment already there!!
I always sort by “New” and browse “All.” Just to upvote and give traction to the smaller communities. Especially give my appreciation to any original content.
If there’s too little content, that likely means that you spend more than a couple of hours on reddit. Yep, there’s not enough content to fill your day here. But also, maybe there shouldn’t be. If you go on here like max 1hr each day, you won’t notice a difference. Anything more, yeah, you’re “missing” content. But why spend more than 1hr daily here?..
I moved to Lemmy since the API fiasco, almost 2 years ago, I never posted/voted on reddit since. Sometimes I check some sub for their contents but never ever participate.
I tried then and it just didn’t stick for me for some reason so I crawled back to the ex with my head hung in shame. Attempt #2 is sticking though.
It’s a much bigger user base now, so it’s a much better replacement. And reddit sucks so much more completely now.
I think thats why its sticking this time, the user base is a bit larger and it’s a bit more fleshed out. It’s much easier to stick around when there is something to stick around for.
I still go there sometimes… I only upvote porn, dark humor and shitty spelling.
That way, the ad companies are less interested and the AI training data becomes garbage.
i moved last month due to massive purge of accounts. let the trolls have the politics and news subs.
It’s exactly why I’m here.
Its a great reason too.
after feb 12-13, when they started to aggressively banning people, right after musk complained about r/whitepeople twitter.
It’s shameful. Reddit is a shell of its former self.
Banning 3rd party apps was the tipping point for me. Their official app is shit.
Same, never been back
Reddit opens YouTube links in an internal browser where it can’t see you’re already logged in. Been like that for YEARS.
other forums did that to, like y’a answers, before it was shutdown.
I use to go around talking shit on reddit. Not trolling, just being completely blunt to stupid people. I found myself doing this more and more. It wasn’t until they banned me that I realized… it’s not me. The people on reddit are getting more and more dumb and annoying every day because reddit is going down. A lot of good people left with the API change and more are leaving now. Reddit is dead. Time for Lemmy.
Some of my favorite subs would have a total meltdown, like end of the world shit, because it closed for 24 hours. Then when the app bans happened, there were the blackouts and once again, people were angry at the audacity of the mods not being submissive.
They want their content above literally anything else. Take it away for a moment and their entire world collapses. And when you see the all consuming, brain-dead, content they were viewing, AND THE IMPORTANCE THEY PUT ON IT, it’s no wonder why they have the reputation they do. That was very sobering.
thier too addicted to certain subs, the main ones are politics, news(adjacent subs of these 2), entertainment, and sports. every other subs is neglible impact.
The two worst reactions that I saw were gaming and NFL. You’re right that most of the subs were fine. It’s the big ones that were addictive to a point I didn’t realize until something happened.
same thing here, i was reminding that thier info was outdated, and other stuff,and i started reporting more, then that also increased and i was getting banned around the same time.
You’re a decade late on that
Musk is, in fact, a giant baby.
Well that explains why I dropped reddit. Anything Musk touches turns to shit.
FEB 12, was THE WEEK of the beginning of the great purge
Here’s his Doge email adress, erm71@who.eop.gov Posting it on reddit anywhere in the comments it will instantly be deleted by reddit.
Haha I connected that addy to a bot at https://mailbait.info/run and sent him a few thousand emails a day of what I imagine his interests were. I’m sure he found all the links to personal escort services, nude beach satellite imagery, mammalian genital enhancement, one way vacations and STD diagnosis and treatment all very useful.
Haha that’s amazing! If your interested i got an full list of all email addresses of the Doge team, but I can’t post pictures in the comments yet, my account is not old enough. Edward.H.Coristine@doge.eop.gov this is the adress of “Big Balls”
My PC and internet bandwidth have limits, you know :) I will run Big Balls for a bit though…
I did the same to VoteBlue for spamming the shit out of me every day since before the election.
All spammers deserve the same treatment, blue, red or pearly pink…
give him all the trans porn he seems to be obssesed with.
I want to make everyone aware of the fact that ERM stands for Elon Rumpelstiltskin Musk.
