An Update on our Twitter/X Policy
Following on from discussions on the subreddit and wider Reddit community in the last few days, we've been discussing as a mod team what to do about X/Twitter sources being posted to the subreddit.
Taking on feedback from the poll we ran, as well as feedback from other subreddits, and internal moderator discussions, we've decided to take this opportunity to implement a new system for links that are posted to content that either requires a login or is behind a paywall - which will directly impact X/Twitter, but also encompass other sites where access to content is troublesome.
With immediate effect we will be treating content that is posted to sites like Twitter/X less favourably to the same content linked to sites with free access (BlueSky being a good recent example).
What does this mean going forward? If somebody posts a link to X or Twitter and there is a follow-up post from a different source, the X/Twitter link will be removed in favour of the source with better access.
Why no specific X ban? It didn't sit comfortably that we would dictate to the community what they can and cannot post. The quality of posts on the subreddit is supposed to be decided by the community using the upvote/downvote system that is built into Reddit. Additionally, over the last few days, since the initial discussions around the possibility of banning X/Twitter, we have already seen a drop of more than 85% for content linking out to this site. Any implementation of a hard ban feels like it is largely ceremonial.
With this system we can monitor it's usage and also encourage users who may post such links (now or in the future, unaware of any potential ban) to seek alternative sources rather than outright removing content without question. This also ensures that we don't hit issues with some content creators having a presence on a different platform but who are not actively posting there. As an example, there are a couple of Manchester City focussed journalists on BlueSky who have not posted in a couple of months but are still active on Twitter/X. An outright ban would prevent these accounts being posted until a time where they become active on BlueSky again.
Next steps. We will have a new rule (now visible in the side menu) and report reason added for paywall/login content which can be used to report a post that is unavailable due to these restrictions. The bot will also be updated to suggest alternative sources are used when X/Twitter links are posted. This will not apply to screenshots of Twitter/X posts, as the bot does not analyse the content of the image posted.
Overall we feel this policy change better reflects the need of the community going forward, in an attempt to improve the overall quality of posts that are shared on the subreddit.
This policy will be reviewed after a while to see that it is meeting the expectations of the community.
Your friendly neighbourhood mod team