On January 20, Donald Trump made history as one of two US presidents to be sworn in for a second, non-consecutive term. Elon Musk took to the podium at the Capitol One arena, where, after a few seconds of dancing, he put his hand to his heart and thrust his arm out in the air with a straight elbow and fingers close-pressed. He turned and repeated the action to the crowd behind him.

The response the next day was divided along partisan lines. But among those responses, one emerged that, at the time, was entirely unexpected: dozens of Reddit communities began proposing their subreddits ban links to X. A disproportionately high number of the subreddits we viewed are dedicated to sports teams — particularly, early in the trend, UK Premier League football teams. Posts proposing the banning of X links in these subreddits often received more upvotes than posts celebrating major victories for those teams, like historic championship wins or the recruitment of once-in-a-generation star athletes to the team.

Stranger still, at least 35 of the posts had identical or nearly identical post titles, many of which were posted within minutes of each other. Over 20 of these posts shared extremely similar, and often identical, language in their post bodies.