Elon Musk has made headlines quite a few times this year. The world's richest man is not afraid to ruffle feathers. And he certainly doesn't shy away from sharing his thoughts online - no matter what they may be. And that's even if they're aimed at U.S. president, Donald Trump.
Musk frequently champions his commitment to "free speech," and speaks out against people being punished for posting things online. But in February this year, he had r/WhitePeopleTwitter banned for 72 hours...
At the time, Musk was heading up the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). r/WhitePeopleTwitter was awash with posts claiming DOGE staff had been granted access to sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.
Some of the comments reportedly called for violence against members of the government department. Musk took to his own X platform (formerly known as Twitter) and shared "they have broken the law," alongside a post containing the comments. Within a hot minute, the community had been banned by Reddit.
"Over the last few days, we've seen an increase in content in several communities that violate Reddit Rules," announced Reddit at the time. "Debate and dissent are welcome on Reddit - threats and doxing are not."
The moderators of the subreddit had removed some of the controversial comments after Musk made them public. But, it was too little, too late. When users tried to access the page, they were met with a message noting that it had been "temporarily banned due to a prevalence of violent content."
It added that "Inciting and glorifying violence or doxing are against Reddit's platform-wide rules," and said the subreddit would reopen in 72 hours.
Reddit took it a step further, slapping a permanent ban on another subreddit entitled r/IsElonDeadYet. That page had popped up shortly after r/WhitePeopleTwitter was temporarily shut down. And on an almost daily basis, someone would use it to post that Musk had not passed away.
Meanwhile, people were quick to criticize Musk's double standards, with head of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), Imran Ahmed, saying his comments contained "rich irony."
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"It is always one rule for Elon, another rule for everyone else," Ahmed said. "Oh, he's about freedom alright – the freedom to do whatever he wants, no matter the cost to people, their families, and the fundamentals of democracy."
The two have a history... In 2023, Musk sued the CCDH, claiming it took "unlawful" steps to access data from X after it claimed hate speech had risen on the platform, reports the BBC. That case was dismissed by a U.S. judge in 2024.
Today, on the r/WhitePeopleTwitter page, rule 7 states that "Rule 9 is the One True Rule of Reddit."
And Rule 9 states that "We reserve the right to remove/approve any post and ban anyone that we may think will ruin/devalue the community."
"Participate at your own risk," it adds. "We might ban you just because we feel like it."
