Elon Musk pressured Reddit’s CEO on content moderation
Nearly two months ago, Elon Musk went on a public crusade against Reddit.
On X, he said it was “insane” that subreddits were blocking links to the platform in protest of him ~~appearing to give a Nazi salute~~ giving repeated Nazi salutes. A few days later, he posted that Reddit users advocating for violence against Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees had “broken the law.”
As it turns out, Musk wasn’t only using his X platform to call out content on Reddit. He was also privately messaging Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, according to people familiar with the matter.
Shortly after the two CEOs exchanged text messages, Reddit enacted a 72-hour ban on the “WhitePeopleTwitter” subreddit that hosted the thread about DOGE employees, citing the “prevalence of violent content.” The specific thread Musk shared on X was also deleted, including hundreds of comments that didn’t call for violence or doxxing. (So far, Reddit doesn’t appear to have intervened in any moderator decisions to ban X links from the subreddits they oversee.)
When asked about Musk and Huffman’s correspondence, Reddit spokesperson Gina Antonini sent the following statement: “We take any report of Reddit policy violations seriously, whether on Reddit directly or through other public or private means. We will evaluate content reported to us and take action if violating.” Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The news of Musk’s outreach to Huffman quickly made its way to some of Reddit’s moderators, who discussed it together on Discord. After one wrote, “Musk is coming for /r/Comics,”
which was one of the subreddits that was banning links to X, another responded by calling him a “giant baby,” according to screenshots of the conversation that were shared with me.
EDIT: minor correction up top after y'all gave the text a SolidShake