In the fallout of Elon Musk’s baffling appearance during President Donald Trumpov’s inauguration, a curious new front in the ongoing online culture war has emerged: a push by Reddit sports mods and users to ban links to X (formerly known as Twitter).
On Tuesday, users in various Reddit sports communities — starting with r/hockey, which has 2.7M members, and spreading to individual Canadian hockey subreddits and then Premier League and NFL forums — began talking about whether it’s time to officially cut X out of their lives, with massive amounts of approval for the action from its users.
The discussions center on a mounting frustration with Musk’s leadership, including the platform’s apparent embrace of hate speech and far-right agitators, its increasingly user-hostile interface changes (such as forcing non-logged-in users to create accounts to view posts), and, of course, Musk himself.
If it seems surprising that sports subreddits are leading this charge, it shouldn’t be. These communities thrive on user-posted game highlights, many of which are linked to X posts that a significant number of users can’t access. Sports news also tends to break on X, but with the rise of alternatives like Threads and Bluesky, more Reddit users are voicing their desire to move away from X entirely.
There have already been multiple pushes for X users to migrate to alternative platforms. After the election, thousands of accounts tied to journalism and politics made the jump to Bluesky. However, sports have remained a major anchor keeping many regular users on X. That said, a shift may be underway — many professional teams and beat writers, both at the national and local levels, have started posting on Bluesky, signaling a potential change in the platform’s utility for sports fans.
Not all communities are on board with the push to ban X links, and some are facing backlash for it. A moderator in the r/Chelsea forum has drawn criticism from users for quickly shutting down any posts advocating for an X ban, sparking frustration among the subreddit’s members. Similarly, subreddits for the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings have been swift to remove posts on the topic, prompting further debate and discontent among their users.
This discourse is still in its early stages, and it remains uncertain how many subreddits will ultimately update their community rules. In nearly every subreddit with posts on the topic, the top pinned comment from moderators mentions "internal discussions" about the future of X links.
However, there has been some movement: A few subreddits, such as the one for Nottingham Forest, have already implemented bans on X links. While this shows progress, the overall momentum remains relatively slow and scattered.
