Elon Musk pressured Reddit’s CEO on content moderation
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.
https://www.theverge.com/command-line-newsletter/637083/elon-musk-reddit-ceo-content-moderationOpen linkView original on lemmy.world1048
Comments216
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.
Probably more
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:
Pro-"life" (actually just pro-"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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
...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.
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.
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
By the way, anyone knows if Lemmy has any anti-bot protections in place? In an event that someone just creates a bunch of accounts on random instances and starts upvoting each other’s agenda comments
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.
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, [email protected] 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. [email protected] 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...
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.
Spez is just finally happy his daddy is talking to him.
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.
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.
Last time I signed up for Reddit it asked me to pick some of my top interests. One of the options was Elon Musk.
Not at all surprizing. Spez thinks he's an upcoming Elon-like genius and wants to surround himself with like-minded techbros, but he's actually a massive Musk bootlicker.
Wait, there's a difference between those two things?
he looks like an alien recently birthed from some biopod.
Reddit is dead!
Has been for a long time.
One thing Musk knows how to do well is run and moderate a social media platform.
Oh wait. Stop. Reverse that.
Unfortunately for the rest of us he's running it perfectly well. Problem is it's not a social media platform, it's a nazi social media platform.
and people who are not nazis are sitll using it in large numbers.
you mean run his mouth, like diarrhea, much like trump does.
That makes sense. Spez is such a spineless dweeb, it checks out that a narcissistic blowhard like Musk would be pushing him around.
Hey.... That's hurtful.
he was sucking off musk since the twitter purchase. '22
Of course he did. Come on over people! Haven’t gone on Reddit since I got lemmy.
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.
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
This is why we need more competitors and especially federated platforms like this
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.
Guys if you haven’t already, I suggest doing what I did a few weeks ago and actually delete your Reddit account, not just stop using it. They need to see their registered account number plummet.
Plummet? Never gonna happen bro, every day there's thousands of bot accounts being registered on reddit.
That's dead internet theory for you.
Sadly it was funnier when it was just a theory.
I’m glad I escaped the cracking glass dildo that reddit has become
Yeah, we know.
these two losers deserve each other.
I'm glad to be here on a platform free of Musk's direct influence.
Liquidate Musk
People are prefacing their comments on reddit with "I'm not advocating violence" just to avoid getting banned. The climate there has shifted dramatically recently.
It's like posting in a food subreddit with, "Hi, I'm not advocating political violence, but I really enjoy a nice chicken cordon bleu with asparagus."
when musk complained about whitepeopletwitter for advocating violence, while himself and X is advocating the same thing in a much more aggressive way is when reddit started banning people critical of trump and musk, first they have to look like they are being "fair and both sides" by allowing astroturfing from right wingers and trolls then when comments get baited into arguments they report those comments.
Another solid reason to abandon Reddit.
Non paywalled link: https://archive.is/RVmD2
Trash knows trash
Daddy issues bringing the billionaires together.
Someone (especially someone in a position of power) calling someone’s actions illegal (whether true and/or justified or not) is advocating state-sponsored violence against that person.
Reddit became such a stooge pit full of obviously skewed moderation. Glad I left.
Like anyone worth knowing GAF about Reddit.
Oh right, that site from the past I haven't opened in weeks. How are they doing? Is it still a cesspool of idiocy and advertisements for scams?
Seeing what reddit has been doing, this isnt suprising
its also around the same tme they began another purge into early february too.
No wonder with how shite Reddit has been the last few months.
since NOV 5 you mean. the multiple ban waves was quite noticeable. while they were banning RU troll farms, and rw trolls, but it wasnt enough, since alot of normal people got hit with egregerious bans. it tells us the propaganda trolls make up the majority of comments on most subs.
That was very obvious ngl
Obviously?
Reddit loves nazis. Say anything bad about Musk and you will be banned.
And that gutless piece of shit caved to it. I deleted my reddit account a while ago now, and it's not coming back. Fuck reddit, and fuck Leon.
it was right before they "Accidentally deleted all those subs that offend snowflake conservatives" like narccist help subs, trans subs,,,etc.
Shocker.
RIP Reddit o7
I mean Reddit is a a corporate/military opinion/sentiment farm and a US Mil psyop conduit. Look up DARPA's Social Media in Strategic Communications project.
its also one for RUssian troll farms too. you can tell when it becomes extremely quiet on all subs, is when putin needs to address internal / or non-us propaganda.
Pressure? .... you mean a text or a quick phone call telling him what to do
Paywalled article, don't click link.
Typical tiny dick energy.
It's total BS but it's not like the previous administration wasn't doing the same thing to a lesser degree. It's documented. It's one of 100 reasons I left Reddit 1 1/2 yrs ago. Propaganda and content manipulation sucks no matter who is pulling the strings. It goes way farther back too.
Oh yeah, I remember Bruno, the previous administration's pet billionaire. That little scamp that was basically shadow president and made sure no one was saying bad things about Nazis like himself. Crazy we had two of those guys in a row.
Don't you people ever get tired of BoTh sIdEs-ing?
What is documented and could you provide a link? I don't think I'm understanding what you're saying.
I think he's a "but both sides" er.... One of those people who excuses the horror of what's happening today because "biden", or someone else he doesn't like apparently did something 2% as bad, in his opinion, years ago.
Yep, and also probably a bot. I've seen a ton of these kind of bots around lately. The "it's documented" part is new though. I'm curious how a bot would answer that if they answered at all.
It's just gas lighting. Maybe there are people that might agree with it because "it's documented", the sort of people that do their "due diligence" by watching Fox. It's just BS with crap sprinkles on it.
most of the propaganda was by Russia, or did you forget that. even redditors themselves reported it. like half of the comments are fru RU, then US TO lesser degree.
Just gonna tag you as 'fucking moron'..
Wait you can tag now in lemmy?