Many Reddit users are boycotting the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, after Elon Musk twice made a gesture during President Trump’s inaugural celebration that drew comparisons to the Nazi salute.
Mr. Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform, was speaking at a celebratory rally after Mr. Trump’s installment as the 47th president on Monday when he grunted, placed his hand over his heart and lifted his arm with the palm facing down in a hail to the audience.
Although Mr. Musk played down the criticism, speculation about the gesture’s meaning broke out online, including on Reddit, where people gather in thousands of forums known as subreddits to discuss niche interests, including hobbies, sports, celebrity gossip and geopolitics.
By Tuesday, a proposal had emerged in dozens of Reddit groups across a wide spectrum of interests: Many users wanted to place a ban on linking to X posts as a way of boycotting the platform and Mr. Musk.
A moderator of a subreddit devoted to Formula 1 racing said that it would ban content from X “for a trial period.” Links from X are now also banned in r/newjersey, the moderators of that forum said in a post that was accompanied by a photo of Mr. Musk emblazoned with a red block symbol. (Other place-centered forums had similar posts.) TwoXChromosomes, a space centered on women’s perspectives, said that a bot would automatically remove X links. That announcement garnered thousands of approving votes.
By Wednesday morning, organizers of groups with vast audiences focusing on hometowns, sporting teams, board games and the economy were discussing or surveying the appetite of their members for a potential boycott of X. Users who supported one cited several reasons, chief among them to push back against Mr. Musk after his appearance at the inauguration event. Others said they had been frustrated with Mr. Musk for some time because of his transformation of X and his views on politics and other matters.
Mr. Musk appeared to dismiss the interpretation of his gesture later on Monday, sharing a user’s post on X that called the “salute hoax” part of a Democratic “dirty tricks campaign” against him. “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks,” Mr. Musk added. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”
As momentum built on Reddit for an X boycott on Tuesday, many users who were aghast at Mr. Musk’s gesture said that the online protest was a way to show “zero tolerance” for Nazism. Others said the gesture was the final straw, and pointed to accusations that X spreads misinformation or has simply become difficult to use.
“There’s no doubt that over the past years Twitter has become a low-quality source,” the moderators for the Formula 1 group said, citing X’s prioritization of posts from paying users and its “promotion of sensationalist content.” Feedback from their community, they said, had prompted them to take the step.
But the boycott was divisive; some users raised questions about censorship and free speech, and supporters of Mr. Musk called it an orchestrated campaign against him. Some conservatives in another forum said that a boycott would encourage them to abandon Reddit instead.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment while Reddit said an X boycott was not a company policy.
“Reddit has a longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of association,” a Reddit spokeswoman said on Wednesday. Reddit does not ban links from X, she added, noting that plenty such links were still up. Communities were free to propose their own rules, the spokeswoman said, and many had previously prohibited social media links for various reasons.
Once considered one of the darkest parts of the internet, Reddit has turned around in recent years to become a handy resource for people who are searching for news, entertainment and personal advice. Its chief executive, Steve Huffman, has maintained a lower profile than his predecessors and other social media figures like Mr. Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta.
Reddit’s embrace of volunteer moderators, along with its policing of harassment and other toxic behaviors, helped it transform how users interact in its forums.
“It is the public square. It’s where people meet these days, and it is a place where people can organize,” said David Dunning, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, who has studied political beliefs and polarization.
Professor Dunning said that a boycott could reveal insights on how people respond to political polarization. But whether it would have an impact remained to be seen, he said, depending on the answers to critical questions.
“One is, how many communities does this spread through?” he said. “And the second is, how long does it last? Both those dimensions really matter.”
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