Direct links to X/Twitter will no longer be allowed on /r/ffxiv
Greetings everyone,
We would like to give thanks to everyone who provided feedback and shared their concerns in the petition thread yesterday to ban links to X/Twitter on this subreddit. After reading through the responses to the thread, there are a few main points we'd like to address:
Banning links to X/Twitter might prevent people from seeing official news
Every piece of official news is posted to Square Enix's own website, The Lodestone. Not only does it contain maintenance updates, special notices, etc. but it's already the de facto platform that our community uses when submitting news to the subreddit.
Banning links to X/Twitter could harm artists who share their work on /r/ffxiv
This is a real possibility. It's commonplace for artists in our community to link back to their socials and X/Twitter remains one of the most popular sites for doing so.
That being said, X/Twitter has also become a more hostile place for artists who do not wish to have their works used to train generative AI models. We encourage any artists uploading their work to use alternate social media sites (like Bluesky) or portfolio sites (like Cara) that do not scrape user content for AI training.
Banning links to X/Twitter won't do much to deprive the site of traffic
This is probably true, at least in the case of /r/ffxiv. In the last 6 months, we've only averaged roughly 3 posts/month from any x.com / twitter.com domain (or alias). On the flip side, this also means that a ban on these domains is unlikely to have much impact on your browsing experience.
So why bother banning links if the actual impact will be negligible? Simply put, our community expressed an overwhelming desire to join in the collective action happening across reddit right now. Over the last few years, X/Twitter has continued down a path of platforming hatred and bigotry and the owner's most recent display during a high profile political event has served as a breaking point for many.
There were several other reasonable justifications in the thread for banning the domain, such as the fact that x.com links don't embed properly on reddit and/or that they require click-throughs and a login to see content. But let's call a spade a spade - the real and only necessary justification for this ban is that hatred and bigotry get no shelter here.
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With all that being said, we'd like to hear from you again - how would the community like to see this ban enforced? Should we allow screenshots from X/Twitter in place of links, or should any content from the platform be banned outright? We've attached a poll to this post for convenience.
Thanks again to everybody who participated in the discussion. We ask politely that any future discussion on this topic remain inside designated threads (like this one) and to please keep things civil and respectful.