ANNOUNCEMENT: r/nba will no longer permit links to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Threads

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.

We have reached this decision after taking recent events and strong sentiment from our community into account. While we try our best to stay neutral and apolitical, we do not believe taking a stance against Nazi symbolism is or should be a political issue. Hate speech and the promotion of it has never been tolerated in our community.

In addition, our users have brought forth issues regarding Twitter and other social platforms like it, ranging from accessibility, to content quality, to concerns over data privacy. Since the change in ownership, Twitter has also seen a significant rise in spam and x-rated content.

Below, we will provide further context for how we came to this decision and how we will operate going forward. Additionally, we will be monitoring the situation for the next 30 days to gauge user experience and feedback on the impact to the subreddit and solicit further feedback, and implement any changes at that time.

Please feel free to provide any feedback or opinions on the matter.

Thank you

Why do this now?

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.

We tried to consider any and all factors and felt this was the clearest path forward at this juncture.

Why not permit screenshots of Tweets?

This was something we went back and forth on but decided it was not a can of worms we wanted to open right now but would monitor as an option down the road. While screenshots are an easy alternative to posting direct links, there are a few reasons why we want to go without screenshots first:

The biggest concern with screenshots is that they are much more difficult to verify as legitimate. Screenshots are not accessibility-friendly for screen readers. If we are banning Twitter and other major platforms, we do not want to take half measures. Reddit and r/nba are a significant factor in the internet content ecosystem. We believe that if reddit traffic is not supporting platforms like Twitter in any way, that journalists and content creators in the space will be encouraged to move to alternative platforms that don’t compromise their users and offer better accessibility for content.

Is this censorship of content?

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.

So where do we go from here?

While we are not endorsing any specific platform, the platform we have seen suggested most from our users and one where we believe a significant contingent of NBA reporters have already made their way over to is BlueSky. ESPN reporters are also beginning to use notifications from the ESPN app.

Thank you again and please feel free to provide feedback on these new rules!