About

The Reddit "Proposal To Ban X.com Links" Movement began on January 21st, 2025, with several sports-themed subreddits calling for a blanket ban on all X (formerly known as Twitter) links on the website. While some called for the ban in protest of Elon Musk supposedly doing a Nazi salute at Donald Trump's post-inaugural rally in Washington DC, other Redditors proposed the ban given that people without an X account cannot access such third-party links, and often miss out on viral posts. The protest movement began with a post made by Redditor /u/BobBastrd on /r/Hockey, with similar posts spreading to other non-sports-related subreddits soon after.

Origin

On January 21st, 2025, Redditor^[1] /u/BobBastrd posted to /r/Hockey, writing, "Can we ban twitter links now?" The post read, "Can we stop posting twitter links please? I don't mind skipping a highlight if it's obly on there. And even then there's surely alternatives elsewhere." The post gathered over 33,000 points in a day.

Other subreddits saw similar viral posts pop up on January 21st, with /u/Yopeman posting to /r/LiverpoolFC,^[2] writing, "Proposal to ban X.com links." The post continued, "Seen this on a few other football club subreddits – seems like a no brainer to me, especially given the values of our club." The post gathered over 30,000 points in a day.

Redditors from soccer club subreddits like /r/Barca^[3] and /r/ChelseaFC^[4] reposted the /r/LiverpoolFC post, proposing the same ban on X.com links.

Spread

More sport-related subreddits began seeing posts about a "Proposal to ban X.com links" gain traction on January 21st, 2025, including /r/Formula1,^[5] where /u/lauraslaw wrote, "Even changes such as only allowing Twitter/X screenshots rather than sharing direct links, this would at least reduce the traffic going to the site," gathering over 41,000 upvotes in a day.

On January 21st, /r/MadeMeSmile^[6] moderator /u/Llim made a post with the title, "Would it make you smile if we banned all links to Twitter?" The post read;

Most of the posts in r/MadeMeSmile contain content that is hosted directly on reddit, and so our community would not be significantly affected by this one way or the other. Any comments that contain links to Twitter would be automatically removed; there's not many of these to begin with, so again, the impact would be small. But it would make the mods smile….

Also on January 21st, /r/law^[7] user /u/orangejulius made a post for other moderators considering the X ban, saying that the /r/law subreddit had banned links to X without major inconvenience when Elon Musk reinstated Dom Lucre's account despite him posting CSAM.

Not everyone agreed with the proposed ban on X links, with Redditor /u/Curse06 posting to /r/TrueUnpopularOpinion,^[8] writing, " Leftwing redditors trying to get X links banned in other reddit groups is peak patheticness," gathering over 400 points in a day.

/u/LordCaption made a /r/SubredditDrama^[9] masterpost of many subreddits calling to ban X.com links on January 21st, gathering over 1,000 points in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References