Welcome to FTW Explains: A guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. You may have heard about Reddit banning links from other social media sites and wondering what is going on. That’s OK because we’re here to help.

If you haven’t been on Reddit in a few days and popped over to your favorite sub to see what’s going on, you may have noticed a post at the top of the page declaring a ban on links from Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Many other subreddits are currently voting on the issue.

There are a couple reasons why this is happening and we’re going to try and unpack it all.

Wait, so you can no longer post a link to any of those social media sites to Reddit?

No, Reddit itself is not banning links from Twitter or Meta products.

Individual communities hosted on Reddit — called subreddits — are either collectively deciding to ban the links, or are asking each subreddit’s moderators to declare a ban.

Which subreddits have banned Twitter and Meta products already?

In the sports world, the two big ones are r/NBA and r/NFL. Each community boasts at least 10 million subscribers (though many more sports fans can lurk without subscribing). Both r/NBA and r/NFL are ranked among the top one percent of subreddits based on size.

It’s also important to note these pages are not run by the leagues themselves. They are independent forums where fans can gather to discuss their favorite teams and sports. The NFL and NBA have no say here.

Ok, so why is this happening? Is it because of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? Is this a politics thing?

That would seem like the obvious answer, right? Well, it is and it isn’t.

Yes, backlash to Elon Musk has played a role in these bans after he made a controversial gesture resembling a Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration. But there is a technical issue at the root of why so many subs are banning Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

Simply put: Twitter and Meta product links make for a horrible user experience on Reddit because they force you to log in to view and browse content. That pretty much goes against everything Reddit communities stand for when it comes to openly sharing content from around the web.

While some communities were already discussing a ban because of the technical problems, the movement was joined by those who want to decrease traffic to Twitter following Musk’s recent behavior. The coalition proved more than enough to push the ban through on r/NBA and r/NFL.

Moderators for the NBA subreddit, in particular, were incredibly thorough in explaining their decision to ban those links:

Effective immediately, r/nba will be banning links to Twitter/X, as well as other social media platforms that require logins for their content to be browsed, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads.

…

In the end, there were three key elements in making this decision:

• An increase in hate speech and discriminatory language, both on Twitter overall and coming directly from the owner of the platform.
• A litany of functionality, usability and content quality issues that have existed for a while.
• Considering the sentiment of our users.

Moderators at r/NFL echoed those sentiments:

Links to X/Twitter will not be allowed on r/NFL with immediate effect. This also includes screenshots.

There has been much discussion in recent days about the platform and actions of its owner. But it has been a point of contention on this subreddit for a long time and for other reasons.

These include the “karma race” to post news first, the inability to edit tweets meaning updates or tangential news must become its own thread, information not being preserved when content is deleted, users not being able to view content without an account and a variety of others.

For most of this subreddit’s history, these downsides have been understood by the userbase as being inconvenient but necessary. However, in light of recent events and the continuing path that platform is taking to make the user experience for Redditors less than ideal, combined with news sources also moving to other sites, X/Twitter links are no longer allowed on r/NFL.

As we do with all policies we will evaluate in the future.

This sounds a lot like censorship. What happened to free speech?

For starters, that’s not at all what free speech means.

To the larger point, these subreddits are not banning information or ideas shared on Twitter or Meta products. They are simply banning links to them.

Again, from r/NBA:

Ensuring that we were not limiting or censoring content was one of the primary points of discussion for us. We do not believe that this handicaps or censors content because we are not putting a restriction on specific content or subject matter. We believe that any notable story that takes place in the NBA environment will still find its way to our subreddit through other avenues that are still permitted.

Which other subreddits could ban Twitter, Instagram and Facebook next?

The list is extremely long. It seems like just about every major subreddit has a discussion thread debating whether or not to ban links from those sites.

In the sports world, some of the larger communities still deciding what to do include r/hockey, r/baseball, r/formula1 and r/collegebasketball. But individual team subreddits are also weighing bans.

So if you can’t post links from those sites, what are users going to do?

There is not a clear consensus yet. Some communities are still allowing posts of screenshots from banned sites, some aren’t. Some are encouraging users to flock to BlueSky, others aren’t so sure yet.

This thing is all pretty piecemeal because of the decentralized nature of subreddits.

Has there been a response from Meta or Twitter?

Nothing yet, but stay tuned. We’ll update this post as more information becomes available.