Announcement: X/Twitter content to be banned on /r/soccer from Monday 27th January

Hello everyone.

Last week, we hosted a meta thread on the topic of whether X/Twitter content should be banned on r/soccer. The thread received nearly 3,000 comments on what is clearly a topic that people feel strongly about - and hotly-contested.

We recognise also that likely not every person participating in the thread was a regular r/soccer user. Nonetheless, there was a clear consensus. Broadly, the engaged core of the community supports a ban.

"Engaged core" is key here - in subreddits of this size (over 8 million), on a topic as popular as global football, there is a recognised schism between users who engage more 'superficially' with threads for goal highlights, transfer rumours, match threads... and those who engage on a 'deeper' level. Each time there is an important meta issue like this, as a mod team we have to ask ourselves philosophically who the subreddit is really for - the former majority, or latter minority. We ask ourselves this, as when we make decisions about the community, we must think who we are representing.

The answer of course - is both. And that is why these decisions are difficult and nuanced - and why following the meta thread, we have taken the time to consider all of the views expressed in those 3,000 comments (except the fascists, of course) and weigh up amongst ourselves what the best decision is for the community.

Other factors we have considered include:

  • Morality. At Donald Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk made gestures, which unequivocally, were Nazi salutes. Added to this context, Musk has made clear through his actions and behaviour in the preceding years that he is a hateful, bigoted fascist. Our stance as r/soccer mods on this is clear. What is also clear, is that we stand against fascism, in all of its forms.
  • The content provided by X/Twitter to r/soccer. On a less ethical note - a lot of this subreddit runs on links via X/Twitter, including news and transfer rumours. We have had to consider how the utility of this subreddit to the people who use it will be affected by a ban.
  • The US/Western-centric bias. We recognise the feedback from the community, that this issue is heavily dominated by what some call a "Western" bias. It is based in US politics, and many of the anti-Musk commentators are seeing this through a Western lens. r/soccer is a global subreddit (albeit one with a heavy Western bias) - and we recognise that even from a practical point of view, in many countries there exists fewer alternative platforms to X/Twitter, and so we risk losing news from these parts of the world, with a ban.
  • "Keep politics out of sport". We considered this very briefly - because politics is inherently intertwined with sport, and always has been. This is not an apolitical subreddit, and political issues have far-reaching consequences across society, and our sport.
  • Lessons learned from previous Reddit controversies, e.g. the third party app fiasco. We reflected on what we learned as a mod team from this controversy - and felt we did not communicate our decision-making, and the nuance behind it well enough, and acted too quickly with closing the subreddit, then. We wanted to take more time to make our decision this time, as such.
  • The actions of other major subreddits - such as r/NBA and r/formula1, who have proceeded with a ban.

We also considered the personal views of the moderators, in view of all of the above.

Taken together, we therefore decided that overall, the decision in the best interests of our community is to ban X/Twitter. For now, we believe that accepting the disadvantages of a ban is worth it, for the moral stance against fascism

We recognise this decision will be controversial to some - and may not also work out how we expect, so in what may be a disappointingly centrist approach, we have decided to do this on a trial basis at first. This is to allow us to assess the impact on the subreddit and community - and review the decision, if necessary.

The ban, for this trial, will be absolute, in order to fully assess maximum impact. This means:

  1. X/Twitter links will be banned
  2. Screenshots of X/Twitter will be banned
  3. Links in comments of X/Twitter will be banned

If there is no alternative source for content - then this means it will not be posted.

The ban will come into effect from Monday 27th January.

Finally, in case of any accusations of censorship, let us also be clear:

As a user of r/soccer, you do have a choice in this. You can still visit X/Twitter - just not through this platform. We are not censoring content - as what you do with your internet access, remains up to you.

Updates, in due course.