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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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 :)
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.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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…
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.
Yep got a temp 3 day ban on reddit just saying that let’s hope the masked police don’t mess up with someone who has conceal carry license… that is all I said, then boom temp ban.
Reddit is compromised.
Yeah, Reddit has been leaned on. And is compliant.
Leave it to spez to fold like a cheap suit.
they are complicit, and probably are colloborators too.
during the purge on feb 13 is when all my accounts got hit. 1 temp ban for reporting too much, and then suddenly all 5+ accs i barely used were banned.
Reddit is dead!
Has been for a long time.
Of course he did. Come on over people! Haven’t gone on Reddit since I got lemmy.
US Tech need to start relocating. I emailed Warp Shell creators advising I’d reluctantly cancelled my subscription to their actually excellent product; because funding the US economy had become ‘morally incompatible with my workflow’. Hope others can do similar.
Why would they, most of US tech is in on the dystopian dream
A lot of US companies have been happy to relocate to Ireland and enjoy the tax breaks. No reason not to continue, I’d say.
Reddit is a publicaly traded company, and fElon has more money that countries. So, he could literally just buy Reddit and turn it into a propaganda machine. Glad I left. There are some UI stuff that I will miss (like having sub-reddits as a fast-access at the top of the page, or that replies to a posting on Reddit would be indented, or /r/place), but I’ll survive here.
I have a bit of a pet peeve when people use petty terms like fElon or Elmo. It just seems a bit childish and communicates that you’re only interested ad hominem.
But that was before I heard the moniker “Phony Stark”. I think we should always use this to refer to Elon because I think it’s hilarious.
I share the same pet peeve, but I have to admit a few clever ones deserve to survive and you bring a good contender
Ya, it doesn’t annoy me as much as I let on in order to set up the joke and I love hearing new ones.
The only thing that annoys me a bit is using them as a nickname instead of a punchline.
It usually pisses me off immediately, it feels like I’m discussing with 12 years olds, but it’s mostly when they use them as nicknames, as you said.
And constantly.
Jokes and occasional puns, that’s fine, I still find most are not funny to begin with but that’s personal taste.
. like fElon. It has nice wordplay. Could be Fuck Elon or Felon Elon. Although, I believe it’s both.
phony stark mostly came from one of his old profiles when he was wearing the iron man armour to make him appear like he was a “genius” like tony stark. others like space karen, and temu stark.
When he stops targeting an entire group of people with the ad hominem that they’re all child predators, I’ll stop calling him Elmo.
What I hate about Lemmy is the lack of content in semi-specific communities.
What I love about Lemmy is that there’s so much less content overall. I run out of content and I log off. Reddit was a bottomless pit.
It seems Lemmy is where Reddit was 10 years ago.
I think even 10 years ago Reddit was a lot bigger. The niche subs still had some traction. Like, Morrowind there 10 years ago had more stuff than the Elder Scrolls community here does. (I could be misremembering, but that feels right.)
BUT you’re right that it wasn’t endless filler back then. There was an end, and then you were done.
there were alot more subs too, mainly the ones they started banning in '16-17, the illegal subs, around the same time trump came to power, and the gop was complaining about REDDIT subs, i think it was because these subs were hurting gop image.
Reddit no longer deserves r/place
I wonder if he’d lift all the bans, like he did with Xitter, considering he is responsible for a decent chunk of them.
He’d probably lift them for the “correct” people (read as those who agree with him).
reddit was on a downward spiral the moment they went public.
nah, it’s been WAY longer than that. I would say when they closed the source is about when it was starting to go on a downward spiral.
This dude is the CEO of Tesla and is also the head of DOGE, busy cutting critical services for millions of Americans so more billionaires can get richer… He really has nothing better to do than to pressure other companies to restrict user content!?
Controlling what people say equals controlling what people think
Spez is a soft bitch
