In more than 100 Reddit communities, X links have been banned after the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk shot his arm up in the air in what Wikipedia is now calling a “Nazi salute.”
The world’s richest person made the gesture — twice — while speaking at Donald Trump’s second inauguration Monday. Musk brushed off the description and even called to “defund” Wikipedia.
But dozens of subreddits have taken action and prohibited users from posting X links, according to the BBC.
“As of right now x.com has been added to our domain blacklist,” the subreddit r/PCgaming announced Tuesday. “This is something that we’ve been contemplating for a little while now. X has become increasingly hateful, toxic and less and less moderated. This has, in turn, made us less comfortable with letting our subreddit link it to other people. Not to mention the distasteful things Elon Musk has done recently…”
The Dungeons and Dragons subreddit “r/DnD” also decided to ban X links.
Moderators announced the change Tuesday and attributed its decision to the Tesla CEO’s recent gesture: “Given Musk’s actions on Monday, it may be time to rethink how we engage with the platform. Beyond Musk giving two Nazi salutes, he has repeatedly amplified harmful rhetoric and interacted with accounts promoting Nazi ideology, raising serious questions about Twitter’s role in spreading hate and extremism.”
Moderators for “r/NBA,” a subreddit that boasts 15 million members, also took a stand.
The group announced its decision to block X links from being posted on its forum: “We have reached this decision after taking recent events and strong sentiment from our community into account. While we try our best to stay neutral and apolitical, we do not believe taking a stance against Nazi symbolism is or should be a political issue. Hate speech and the promotion of it has never been tolerated in our community.”
While many Reddit communities have taken a stance against Musk, they make up just a fraction of the more than 100,000 communities on the platform.
Musk was heavily scrutinized for the straight-arm gesture at the Capital One Arena Monday. He responded to the criticism on X later Monday: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
Hours later, after Wikipedia wrote that his gesture was “viewed as a Nazi or Roman salute by some,” Trump’s so-called “First Buddy” continued his X rant, this time aimed at the online encyclopedia: “Since legacy media propaganda is considered a ‘valid’ source by Wikipedia, it naturally simply becomes an extension of legacy media propaganda!”
He later added: “Defund Wikipedia until [the] balance is restored!”
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, even chimed in to the controversy. He wrote onX: “I think Elon is unhappy that Wikipedia is not for sale. I hope his campaign to defund us results in lots of donations from people who care about the truth. If Elon wanted to help, he’d be encouraging kind and thoughtful intellectual people he agrees with to engage.”
A Reddit spokesperson clarified that its platform doesn’t have a ban on X links and noted that many Reddit communities also prohibit Reddit links. The spokesperson said: “Reddit has a longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of association.”
