F1 subreddit with 4.8m subscribers bans Twitter/X content

An independent Formula 1 subreddit has caused a stir with a bold new plan.

r/formula1 has built a remarkable community of 4.8 million users (or drivers, in this case…)

It is currently ranked in the top 1% of subreddits.

“Starting today, we are banning Twitter/X content on r/formula1,” they revealed on Wednesday.

“We urge all journalists, creators, photographers and other F1 personalities to also make their content available on alternative platforms.”

They went on to explain: “This subreddit has had restrictions on what content can be posted for a very long time.

“We’ve had the source rating system that labeled the quality of news sites and is still used for removing sensationalist and unoriginal articles.

“We’ve also had limitations on Instagram due to its requirement for an account to view posts. There’s no doubt that over the past years Twitter has become a low-quality source: the login requirements, the flood of bots, the prioritization of content from paying users and promotion of sensationalist content.

“But unlike with news sites in our source-rating system, for Twitter there wasn’t really an alternative. But now that viable alternatives are emerging and the proposal thread from yesterday has shown that the community prefers those alternatives, we think it’s time to try and see how the subreddit works without content from Twitter.”

It represents a bold new initiative for how to share Formula 1 content which does not include Elon Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter).