Elon Musk fires shots at Reddit following fallout with Wikipedia owner
Musk has hit back against a ban on X links in many Reddit communities
Elon Musk has finally offered his reaction to the banning of X links in many of the most popular subreddits, seemingly waging another war just shortly after his public spat with Wikipedia’s owner.
It’s been a clear fact for years that Elon Musk is no stranger to conflict on social media, having had spats with countless celebrities, infamous hacking groups, and even foreign governments.
He even recently pushed back publicly against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after US President Donald Trump announced a $500,000,000 AI-powered program, despite holding a powerful position adjacent to government himself as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
What was most surprising about his recent comments regarding Reddit was simply how long it took him to speak out, as it has been nearly two weeks since many of the largest subreddits on the platform enacted a blanket ban on content from X within their communities.
It all stems from Musk’s alleged Nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration, which also spurned on another spat with Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales, after Musk’s page was updated to include reference to these gestures.
Musk advised his followers to “defund Wikipedia until balance is restored,” while Wales responded, outlining that he hopes Musk’s “campaign to defund us results in lost of donations from people who care about the truth,” reiterating that “Wikipedia is not for sale.”
Following on from this, Musk then responded to a post on X where someone was banned from the r/comics subreddit after declaring that Tesla CEO’s gesture at the inauguration was not a Nazi salute, stating: “This is insane.”
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
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This is insane
Cedric Hohnstadt
@cedrichohnstadt
Reddit continues to be anti-free speech. I just got a lifetime ban from the “comics” subreddit. Yesterday I posted a humor comic that got over 5,400 upvotes. Then I noticed that there was a pinned post from the moderators saying that comics linked from X could no longer be…
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The story, posted by Cedric Hohnstadt, involved him posting an image to the subreddit, then realizing that the moderators had made the community one of many that has banned posts from X.
Hohnstadt commented underneath this post: “Respectfully, Musk is not a Nazi and it was not a Nazi salute,” leading him to a lifetime ban for ‘Nazi apologia’ with no appeal possible.
Many in the replies to Musk’s quoted post have decried these actions, implying that X is now the only place to have ‘free speech’. How much you believe this appears to depend on what side you land on, as journalists have been banned under Musk’s ownership at the same time as the reinstating of users who had been banned for posting child sex abuse on the platform.
There also appears to be a larger misunderstanding in regards to what Reddit is as a platform, as while it does have an overarching ownership team – who have asserted, as per Newsweek, that “Reddit Inc. has no ban on X links,” and the company “also has no ban against the particular user mentioned in the X post,” – most of the content and user control is performed by individual subreddit moderators.
It was Musk’s alleged Nazi salute that caused many subreddits to ban content from X (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
While Musk was previously somewhat of a darling for the site, many users have since turned on the richest man in the world as he has pushed into the politically far right.
“Dude won’t be happy until he owns everything and everyone,” argues one user on r/technology, adding that “he won’t be happy then either, but that’s his aim.”
Another outlines: “Actually Elon, Reddit is NOT banning X links. THE PEOPLE of Reddit are banning X links. Usually after VOTING. That’s how democracy works.”
With Musk’s seemingly growing influence in US politics it’s unlikely that many subreddits will change their stance any time soon, so he’ll either have to accept that others have their own rules and opinions or continue a social media tirade as usual.
