Reddit "Proposal To Ban X.com Links" Movement

Overview

The Reddit "Proposal To Ban X.com Links" Movement, also known as the Twitter Links Banned On Reddit Campaign, began on January 21st, 2025, with several sports-themed subreddits calling for a blanket ban on all X / Twitter links on the website. While some called for the ban in protest of the Elon Musk salute controversy following Donald Trump's presidential inauguration event in Washington, D.C., 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 the subreddit /r/Hockey, with similar posts spreading to other non-sports-related subreddits soon after. Some users also pushed back against the proposals, as well as mocking the Reddit mods for suggesting it and posting memes about the event.

Background

On January 21st, 2025, Redditor^[1] /u/BobBastrd posted to the subreddit /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 upvotes in a day.

Other subreddits saw similar viral posts pop up on January 21st, with Redditor /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 upvotes in a day.

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

Online Reactions

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 Redditor /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, 2025, /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 the subreddit /r/TrueUnpopularOpinion,^[8] writing, "Leftwing redditors trying to get X links banned in other reddit groups is peak patheticness," gathering over 400 upvotes in a day.

Redditor /u/LordCaption made a /r/SubredditDrama^[9] masterpost of the many subreddits calling to ban X.com links on January 21st, gathering over 1,000 upvotes in a day as the movement continued to spread on the platform.

Several memes referencing the proposal to ban X / Twitter links on Reddit appeared in late January 2025, such as one posted to /r/dankmemes^[10] on January 21st, using the Say The Line Bart meme format, which received over 5,800 upvotes and 500 comments in 17 hours.

A Drakeposting meme mocking Redditors for proposing the idea was shared to the subreddit /r/dankmemes^[11] on January 21st, 2025, receiving over 6,500 upvotes and 250 comments in 23 hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References