They Used to Love Elon Musk. Now They're His Biggest Enemies Online.

https://slate.com/technology/2025/01/reddit-bans-x-links-elon-musk-nazi-salute.html

On Monday, Elon Musk spoke at a televised inauguration rally and threw a Nazi-style salute to the adoring crowd not once but twice. Brushing off the widespread outrage with the help of his sycophants, he has declined to clarify just what he meant by that gesture. Meanwhile, German officials and journalists, Jewish American activists, and white supremacists have all agreed that, whatever the intent, the salute was a meaningful callback to one of the darkest chapters of modern history.
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This r/OptimistsUnite community member, who has been on Reddit for more than a decade, pointed to a few reasons why the site is one of the last social networks amenable to protests of this nature. “Reddit as a whole is pissed at mainstream media capitulation to Trump and the excuse-making,” they wrote. “There are right-wing pockets that love it but Reddit tends to skew techy, liberal to libertarian, and educated. All of those demographics revolt at the idea of sanewashing Trump and his major boosters like Musk.”

Indeed, users from staunchly right-wing spaces on Reddit, like r/conservative, are complaining that the anti-X campaigning is “spamming” the site with “leftist propaganda,” calling for Reddit’s corporate higher-ups to “take back control of the website.” However, Reddit’s leadership seems content to let things stand: A spokesperson told USA Today that “Users can and are able to modify or issue their own rules within their respective forums.”