Musk 'Pressured' Reddit CEO to Silence DOGE Critics, Leaving Moderators Outraged: Report.

It's why I came here...

I'm glad I got banned, Reddit is going downhill fast

"Free speech absolutist" 🤣🤣🤣

My God they've pissed off Hitler

This was finally the point that made me come here

I’m old enough to remember when Elon released “the twitter files” in an attempt to demonstrate how the federal government supposedly exerted egregious pressure on private media in violation of first amendment right.

Reddit is dead to me and I was with it since near the beginning.
- There was that peak time back in the 2010s. Right after they got rid of all the worst hate communities but before they were taken over by astroturfing.
  Maybe like 2014-2015ish?

Let's be real here, Pig Boy didn't need Elon to pressure him much to clamp down on people critical of the elite.

That's more or less why I left reddit and came to lemmy.
This is in fact my very first post here. :)
- Same. Just created my account
  
  I think we chose well.
  
  Welcome fellow former redditor!
- I've been here for about a month, switching bettween this and Reddit, while still mostly using Reddit. This made me leave Reddit completely. This and getting banned for 3 days for upvoting a comment was the final straw.
  
  In over 2 decades of internet, i can safely say banning users for upvoting things is the most ridiculous thing i've ever seen a discussion board do. Just remove upvotes at this point and have the feed curated by Lord Muskrat.
  
  Similar final straw for me.
  I had wrote an anti putin thing under a post of Selenskyj where he stated putin will soon die, I confirmed that I hope so too and got like 400 upvotes and a hour or two later got deleted and a 3 day ban.
- I got here because they killed Apollo 🫶🏻 never forget
  I use Voyager now for lemmy
- Unlike others, i didn't get banned from Reddit, i just wanted to get a head-start learning this site, because Reddit is on the way to become X2.
- Welcome, I am a former redditor myself.
- I'm brand new as well and hopeful but wow the smaller forums here need some love. The topic variety is small to the point where maybe straight up bot cloning subreddits here where posts on Reddit just get reposted to their Lemmy equivalent to kick start refugees feeling at home. Plus if there's basically cross platform discussion posts it gives ground for users of existing subreddits to migrate.
  
  Rome wasn't built in a day. Think of it of getting in at the ground floor, where we'll create topics and in-jokes that will be repeated ad nauseum for decades!
  
  I have yet to come across a repost community here that actually gets any comments on the posts. I wound up unsubscribing from all of them because they just clog up my feed.
- Welcome, fellow ex redditor.
  
  Thanks :)
- same!
  
  Welcome for both of us! :)
- Welcome to the party!
- Welcome friend!!
- Yep, Reddit pushed me this way too, but I'm much happier. Welcome!
- Welcome here!

I got a lifetime IP ban on Reddit for saying "Fuck Elon Musk all the way to hell" - so fuck Reddit, fuck DOGE, and especially fuck Elon.
- Hmm, sounds like your freedom of speech was suppressed, at least according to the standard Elon espouses. I wonder why he now feels so strongly about doing the opposite thing from what he wanted before. 🤔
  
  I truly can't imagine what that could be, he's always been so stable and trustworthy before.
- lol I got actually hwid banned for refusal to stop Luigi posting
  
  Yeah, they seem super sensitive about anything Luigi
- How's an IP ban even supposed to work when you get a new IP regularly?
  
  This is a myth. We're out of addresses and now most DHCP rules are locked.
  
  Honestly, I wish I knew - I tried creating new accounts from both home and other Wi-Fi networks, and they all got banned within an hour. Our daughter still lives with us and her account was banned too, same thing happened when she tried creating new accounts. I'm assuming it may be tied to the MAC addresses of my laptop and phone, but not sure.
  
  I actually pay extra to my internet provider for a fixed ip so that I may have a privilege of being permabanned
- I got mine for hoping Elon's penis pump would explode and burn him to death from the dick up.
  
  You paint a beautiful picture 😂
- To Hell, you say?
- You forgot “to hell” in your last sentence 🧐

There has been unwarranted censorship at a scale I've never seen on Reddit I thought it was the last bastion of free speech
While actual hate speech and seriously harmful content goes completely unchecked
It is unfortunate
Steve Bannon isnt welcome in Colorado. Phil Long Auditorium shouldn't host nazis. I was banned for saying as much from Fucking Reddit of all places Pointing out that there have been fires at dealerships lately does not equate to harrasment Phil Long Auditorium should not host the Rally period. Their casual attitude towards white supremacy is unacceptable and while i dont believe they should necessarily be burnt to the ground, there are better places to buy automobiles They deserve to be boycotted And i will punch a nazi mod in the face 100% of the time
Edit: UPDATE 2 PROTESTORS WERE RAN OVER BY TWO DIFFERENT HATE RALLY ATTENDEE"S CARS !!! NAZIS ARE VIOLENT PIECES OF SHIT
Told you so r/Coloradosprings
Fuck yall
- I'd argue Lemmy and other decentralized platforms are the last bastion for free speech instead of Reddit though.
  Like, since Lemmy, Pixelfed, Mastodon, PeerTube, and Matrix are decentralized, that naturally shields them from censorship somewhat compared to centralized platforms where you're ultimately at the mercy of whoever runs that platform.
  
  I'd argue Lemmy and other decentralized platforms are the last bastion for free speech instead of Reddit though.
  Lemmy is kind of forced to be, too.
  Horrific speech can be removed from the site. But if you want to see it, the admin logs are open to the public. Other instances also aren't forced to play along with the views of one instance. And each instance can choose whether they want to connect with others.
  So you could create your own Christian Nationalist and White Supremacist Lemmy. But our instances don't have to federate with it. And if they choose to do so, we can leave for a different one or the users can block it entirely.
  Lemmy lets anyone have a platform and, simultaneously, it doesn't force anyone to listen to you just because you have your own platform. Basically, everything that makes Lemmy a decentralized platform also makes it good for moderation without harming free speech.
- No media/communication company supports your expression of your rights.

That's why I'm here. Whatever musk touches turns to shit.
- The mierdas touch!
  
  For anyone who doesn't know: this is a clever reference to the myth of Midas' Touch that I'm totally stealing.

Shadow banned for making a very popular post about how to make DIY Luigi Mangione prayer candles using dollar tree candles, printer and a glue stick on witches vs patriarchy
- ha! that sounds like an amazing post!
- I love everything about this 🤣
- I need this on the Fediverse. Where’s the step-by-step
  
  I posted it on the Luigi Mangione instance. Join us
- Fuck Patriarchy! 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
- Let us see !luigimangione@lemmy.world
  
  I made the same post diy candle on this instance today

I just got a temporary ban for cussing out Elon in one of the antifacist subreddits, felt good. I'm wearing this ban as a badge of honor.
- I got perma banned for calling a magat regarded and telling them to stop eating crayons, under rule 1:
  Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalized or vulnerable groups of people. Everyone has a right to use Reddit free of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence. Communities and users that incite violence or that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned.
  lol. The small, vulnerable, and marginalized group of election winning fascists.
  
  regarded (sic)
  Surely you can insult musk without being ableist though? There's 500,000 words in the English language. Choose one that doesn't drag innocent people into it.

I got banned from reddit for saying that netenyahu should be put on trial and hanged for war crimes.
After their censorship of me for saying a reasonable thing (a war criminal made to face justice) I will say I have altered my opinion. He should be tied up, simply read his charges and then unceremoniously shot in the head.
- I was banned for saying traitors to our nation should be publicly executed. Which is our actual law. So that’s confusing
  
  Trump committed treason on jan 6th, 2021. That is enough reason to hang him, and yet he still breathes.
  
  You can't just cite established law without thinking about what Musk/Trump think. What do you think this is, a democracy?
  
  I said justice would've seen Trump tried on January 7th and hung on January 8th. That got me a soft ban. Then I said kill all Nazis but six and save them for pallbearers. That got me a permaban. Tearing the bandaid off on 12 years of comments and posts hurt but so far I like the attitude of Lemmy a lot better. It feels like real conversation instead of just shitposting and trolling.
- Seems too easy on him. I like the hanging. Or the drugs that work so badly.

I’ve been seeing the steady increase in posts and complaints about Reddit banning folks for political speech for the last couple of months and I finally have had enough so here I am. Been on there for 14 years… Byeeeee.
- Was about 17 years.
  The Russians are astroturfing hard, doing everything to justify their invasion and banning anyone who disagrees.
  No point anymore.
  
  That's not even recent. Russia has been astroturfing Reddit since at least 2015.
  I remember reading /r/politics pretty often back then. All of a sudden, half the posts were from RT talking about Hillary and the DNC. Yes, what they did to Bernie was bullshit but the point was clearly to either get people to vote for Trump instead or to encourage people not to vote.
  Now, like you said, it's about the war. All of a sudden, every single post about the invasion has dozens of people who are totes Ukrainian and think that Zelenskyy is a monster who refuses to end the war. Yet they either have a rather bare post/comment history or never mentioned the war before.
  And, if you go to the profile for any user who identified themselves as Ukrainian years ago, it's crazy but they're still in favor of the war and protecting Ukraine.
  This is what propaganda is. It's not just the government putting up posters saying you should listen to them; it's convincing you that your views are extreme and unpopular.
  
  That's the terrifying thing about it... we're being horribly influenced
- Haven't gotten banned yet but it's definitely gotten to the point on Reddit where you are aware that you can't discuss some topics.
  Like mentioning Luigi could get you shadow-banned. Redditors acted like they were going to stand up against this and yet there's nothing. So the censorship is working - either all the comments are getting removed or people are too afraid to talk about it.

Elon acts like a dude with a very tiny penis.
- Like?
  
  Ya. Who are we kidding. Bros got a tiny pecker.

Reddit has been compromised by the oligarchs.
- I just left after twenty years. I warned them about overly censoring in their research calls but I guess they didn’t want to listen
  
  Jesus has it been 20 years now? I’m old
- It always amazes me people keep on using centralised platforms like reddit.
  Sure lemmy isn't perfect but at least if one instance goes crazy you can always switch.
  
  when it was good, it was real good. Every subject I could want in one place, and I could organize it as I wish.
  Lemmy is a confusing mess and lacking in basic features compared to reddit (although there's probably front ends I could download that would fix my complaints).
  Obviously, I'm here, so the inconvenience is an acceptable price for not being on reddit anymore.
  
  World is already heading that way. It’s one of the few instances that requires your “real” email address and has deleted political threads.
- This is the exact catalyst that finally brought me over to Lemmy
  
  Same. I had JUST said to someone last night that I'd never been banned or even warned, though I'd said plenty stuff on the violently anti fascist end of things. A few hours later, I get a warning, though they didn't say for which comment. Thankfully, someone told me about her!

Man he’s such a little fucking snowflake isn’t he?
- Which one, (fuck) spez or the Nazi saluting trust fund baby?
  
  whynotboth.gif
  
  Yes
  
  That is a very good question.
- I guess even r/whitepeopletwitter wasn't white enough for Musk.
- So much so that he's a goddamn puddle at this point

Reddit died June 2023
I don't know why people are still playing with the corpse
- I agree and haven't returned but lemmy hasn't hit critical mass yet.... Like I don't recall a post with over a hundred replies. Reddit used to have over a thousand on every reply on the first page.
  
  How many of those thousands are actual good comments though? Last time I was there, I swear the majority of comments were from bots reposting the same comments that were in previous threads. It felt peak dead-internet.
  
  I've never considered that a limitation.
  You only need one other person in addition to yourself, for a good discussion.
  If anything, here I'm finding I actually get replies, because my comment didn't drown among a hundred others.
  
  Might be your settings. When I flip the front page to "Active" most of the posts have hundreds of comments (though I prefer setting it to "Top Six Hours").
  
  Literally the next post under this one, sorting by 1d top posts, has 147 comments
  
  This post has 278 comments
  
  You obviously weren't here for the guy who didn't want to poop for days. There were a LOT of replies on that one.
  
  Like 6 good ones and a bunch of the same tired comments about poop knives, broken arms, same, this.
  Here, at least most of the answers are real human beings trying to contribute to a conversation.
  
  I mean, does it really matter? Are you going to read 100 responses on a single post? I feel from Reddit that the larger communities get the shittier they get. More people = smaller intersection of common ground, which leads to dull content and repeating platitudes.
  
  Tbh I've decided I can live with less and less of this. I'll never go back to the giant ad covered spaces. But if this doesn't pickup or even dies, meh
  
  Legitimately who cares though? You‘re not in it for the money with Reddit either.
- Same, once they violated certain principles, it was clear the site was dead. We need to do our best to build lemmy into something. It'll take years.
- Because they have a monopoly on old and especially niche knowledge/communities (also new niche knowledge/communities). As much as I hate it, that's why I personally still have to use reddit sometimes.
- Some people are just into that kind of thing.
  
  (Rest) She never
  was this good in
  bed even when
  she was sleeping
  now she's just so
  perfect I've nev-
  -ver been quite so
  fucking deep in
- I feel like as an A’s fan. The same thing happened to Reddit. Owners turned it into a shit hole.
  
  As a fellow A’s fan I completely agree this analogy.
- IMO, as much as I dislike Reddit, moderation is terrible here and there's some niche subs that cannot exist here because of the lack of moderation.
  
  Luigi

Is this the "free speech" everyone in 'Murica is talking 'bout?
- Musk bought twitter because he wanted free speech...
  Ironic huh
  
  Nah, he wanted to modify what was being said. He blocked and oppressed views he didn't like. It was never free speech. It was always oppression.
  
  Musk bought Twitter because he fucked around trying to manipulate the stock price and accidentally made an agreement he couldn't back out of. He tried. He failed. He was forced to buy it according to the terms he previously specified.
  
  He did. Free speech for bigots that is.
  
  Well, wanted to own a mechanism of free speech so he could control it.
  
  Not ironic when you realize it's this but literally. He wants to own all speech.
- Honestly, say something useful or keep it to yourself, OK? These lil 'gotcha' comments do nothing but take up space and make you feel a misplaced sense of having done something (when you've in fact, done nothing).
  Stuff like this comment, the mango Mussolini comments, the evil Cheeto comments, it all just fucking does nothing while still making people feel like they're being transgressive. You're not. It diverts energy from doing/talking about stuff that affects real change.

I guess time to bail for good?
- Jan 16, 2008. Got me beat by a bit. Beat you to Lemmy though, so I guess I've got that going for me.
  
  We have to take solace where we can
- Most people are too ignorant, indifferent, and/or stupid to make that move.
  
  Honestly, I haven't actually deleted anything totally. But I probably still have a Friendster account.
- Probably, yeah. I made new accounts often but my oldest would probably have been 2010. But I've given up once I found lemmy aside from occasionally going back to help people come over when I know reddit has further agitated its existing base.

What the nazis couldn't subdue - they killed.

America Hates
TRAITORAPIST TRUMP

Because Reddit mods are known for not being massive corruptable stooges?

My permaban came from a post about DOGE. They deleted the comment, permabanned me, and wouldn't let me see what I even commented. They said it was "encouraging violence" but hell no, I was making sure not to say anything like that. Wonder if I just insulted Elon and reddit decided to finally get rid of me.
- Ya. The ol' "encouraging violence". Pretty much the same thing as "national security"

Ah the "free speech absolutist" strikes again.
- Any time I hear someone say they are "free speech" I am going to pause because what it means is: "My speech > your speech"
  True free speech means you know when you're wrong and when you need to change, or as I like to call it: EMPATHY

Add "brown nosing spinless wimp" to the list of acceptable descriptors of Spez
- Fuck u/spez
  This works here right
  
  always and forever

I'm amazed any of you get told why you were banned

Elon is being a damn snowflake.

I get that Musk is doing all types of tropes. But... what is the source for this newspaper I never heard about before? Is there any evidence for these pressures beyond "Trust me bro, we are the Latin times"?
I also deleted my reddit account. What is happening in that sub?

I look at Reddit like I look at Facebook. Both are trash and have outlived their use. If you have a profile on either one, delete it or at least delete the app.
- Reddit has been a an archive of some of the greatest collective minds of humanity. Besides the general algorithm up voting bots hogwash, there have been some really good subreddits with excellent information from learned professionals on topics. it I wish it was preserved rather than deleted. The AskHistorians is one of my favourite professional vetted and clean subreddits, lots of academic discussions there.
  But all things have a Golden Era, and then it's enshittified and fades away. As Lemmy will be one day too.
  
  Yeah, and try as we might, we haven't been able to replicate its biggest selling point. It was unfortunately also its greatest vulnerability regarding the corporatetake over.
  It was a central location from which thousands of large, niche communities could be found.
  Lemmy is great, but the decentralized nature of it also fragments small communities and makes it hard for them to launch. I was super active of the Scuba subreddit, but on Lemmy, there are like 8 scuba communities spread across the instances, but they're all so small there's no activity on them, and that fragmentation makes it difficult for one to reach the necessary critical mass to become active.
  
  I can likely fall into some version of a category of learned professional. IMO, it's fine, many of us have made our migration to Lemmy. Reddit can burn.
  
  I don't disagree necessarily but this is a very euphoric way to phrase it
- Gonna hijack your comment to shill:
  https://redact.dev/
  "The only platform that allows you to automatically clean up your old posts from services like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Discord, and more, all in one place."

I got a ban for saying “even the sharks don’t want to eat Russians” on an article about a Russian tourist getting attacked by a shark.
- Banned for speaking the truth lol
- Maybe you got the ban so one of the moderator's cronies could post the same joke and reap all the karma for themselves!

I love Reddit so much, but the censorship is bullshit! I quit the entire META platform months ago, lost a lot of contacts but fuck Zuckerberg!
- Yeah I quit a while back. I thought it would be harder, I had several old accounts, moderated a couple of small subs, had loads of karma, spent at least an hour a day being active on there. I realised all that shit was sunk cost fallacy and I'm glad I finally left.

No shit, that explains Reddits noticeable change in moderation after the election.
- Before it, it’s PC paradise now a days.

I'm not and never was banned from there, however I left on my own accord after this happened, as if all their other enshittification didn't reinforce that decision.

Personally I couldn‘t care less about moderator outrage. Just read the room already and leave. No amount of kicking and screaming will take the platform off the hands of technofascists. You‘re clearly not valued there so why would they care if you cry about their decisions? Just grow a spine already.
- Exactly, use the power of creation and make it all together in one day

/r/mariokart is gonna fucking implode

That...should be intolerable for redditors, you'd think this would finally make them leave.
- I tested just writing "Luigi" and was banned for a day. I deleted my 10+ years account with over 200k karma. I was so attached to that profile, but I promptly deleted it after being banned. Fuck these billionaires telling us what's ok to say.
  
  Not the karma 😱 Bunch of weirdos
- If they didn't leave after all the crap Reddit has pulled in the last year, they aren't going anywhere.
  
  Reddit is solidly shitlib. They easily get more upset over policy than their own lack of influence over policy. These are people who think the elites care about petitions.
  Everything from the last year pointed to this, they just had to see it.
- I did. I got banned for "Musk fuming is fatally toxic". The platform is dead now. I bet he has good dirt on Huffman.
- +1

Just goes to show how easy it is to get these people upset.
Just call them out
Call them often
Call them out every day
Never stop calling them out ..... you'll know they're listening when someone either tells you or forces you to stop.
Nazis and authoritarians every single one of them.

One more reason to use Lemmy.
- This story compelled me to finally commit to using Lemmy.
  
  Grab some beans, make yourself at home.
  
  Hell yeah. Welcome!
- I got banned from r/comics for calling out US imperialism. Got called a Russian propagandist 😵 And now here I am :)
  
  I got banned from Reddit because I made a suggestion on what should happen to a violent bull terrier dog that attacked a family member
  And they had a child
  No free speech on Reddit
  I think they have people move in to moderator roles that can choose to ban people who disagree with their opinions

The enshittification of Reddit continues on.

Welcome, reddit refugees. You won't miss Spezzit.

Oh good job Musk! Bring them all here! Right into our icy flippers!
- Seems to be working.
  I see many new ex redditors here like me
  
  ✋
- Flippers because we're penguins because we love Linux?
  We're not going to live down that time we held a guy at gunpoint in Grand Theft Auto to help him consider switching to Linux, are we?
  
  No commrade senior citizen most equal of all pimball_wizard, we are not :'[

The day I saw Trump win I knew Reddit was going on the chopping block but even then, it’s been going downhill since 2016 with bots, bot mods, and language policing. Merely saying ‘fucking Luigi’ is a ban worthy offense and it’s absolutely asinine.
- The fucking bots are insane, they don't even try to hide over there.
  
  I will never forget 2013 when Putin refused to sign an international agreement saying we won’t use AI in weapons and the rest of the world was on board with it.
- I received two platform bans in the last few months over the most asinine things. Hadn’t gotten a single one in nearly 15 years up until now.
  
  I used to have three accounts to manage groupings of subreddits until I was banned for racism for asking lib women to treat white dudes better so an Arab spring like incident doesn’t happen before Trump won.
- I have been less active there since the API fracas, and since they announced they're policing upvotes? I haven't been active at all.
  
  For real. Transparency makes this work much better than otherwise.
- Truth is this place will fall too. Unless someone can figure out how to protect against these take overs. The rich control the Internet just as easy as they control everything else.
  If this is successful, it's only a matter of time.
  
  Could last a while with unity but yes.

Musk, the great champion of freedom of speech!

It looks like this is the ex-redditor handshake thread. Did anyone start here without coming from Reddit? I heard about Lemme during the IPO fallout but didn’t pursue it until the mass shadow ban rollout.
I’m also still jumping back and forth, but that’s only because the big content creators for hobby stuff are still on Reddit. Once they migrate, I’ll likely delete my account.
- Mass edit your comments while you still can. I got halfway through my history before being blocked.
  
  I don’t think my comment history merits a mass edit. Anything particularly self identifying I had already scrubbed a while ago and much of my comment history has advocated for non-violent resistance.
  I was shadowbanned because I said Trump was in poor health and more likely to die in office than be a dictator for the next decade. Offensive, sure, but not to the level I’d be afraid of becoming a political target.
- I'm here because I got shadowbannned for some unspecified reason.
- Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that just about everyone on Lemmy originally came from reddit.

It feels like a warped in to another dimension. Did everyone start using only 5 years ago?

People need to stop using reddit.
- Friends don't let friends visit Reddit.
- I deleted my last alt account last week. I'm done.

Why is anyone on Reddit??
- Takes time to quit an abusive relationship.
- More content than on Lemmy.
  
  Then lets change that
- I’m here now cuz of this article :shrug:
  
  Welcome!
  Let's see, what useful welcomes advice can I share...?
  You'll find lots of Linux users here, but we're harmless.
  I'm not sure our interpretation of Star Trek's Gowron has any remaining relationship with the original character, but I guess he's one of our mascots, now.
  If one of us starts to go on about how federation works, it's okay to nod and back away slowly. Federation works just fine without understanding it.
- Inertia
- I'm not anymore because of this.
- Exactly. Just delete your account!
- I no longer have an account, but I lurk in /r/wallstreetbets to read the comments now that the market is so fucked.

Fucking crybaby

The same mods who arbitrarily ban users without showing what rule they claim was broken?
- And who refuse to explain even when asked?
  
  If they don't block you for asking

- Musk what a knob

Yeah, I'd deleted my Reddit posts and then my account in November. I was already irked at what they did to their API, and then the Orange Dingbat got elected and I decided it was enough.
Later on, I went back, but only to lurk, but since many of the specialised subs require that you join in able to read posts makes it pretty unusable at this point.
I miss the old Reddit; I was there for over a decade. But here we are, building a new place for ourselves.
- Almost like the sites need the users more than the users need the sites.
  
  Social platform capitalism. Yupppp