Original post: https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1k7qj5j/r50501_has_been_locked_and_restricted_due_to/
spoiler
The 50501 Movement is a grassroots political organization in the United States that emerged in early 2025 as a response to the policies and actions of President Donald Trump’s second administration. The name “50501” stands for “50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement”, reflecting its goal of organizing simultaneous protests across all 50 states on a single day.
The subreddit for 50501 was initiated by Reddit user Evolved_Fungi and quickly gained traction through social media. It has since organized several nationwide demonstrations including:
February 5, 2025: The inaugural protest day, with events held at state capitols and city halls across the country.
February 17, 2025 (Presidents’ Day): The “No Kings on Presidents Day” demonstrations.
March 4, 2025: A third round of protests focusing on various policy issues.
April 5, 2025: The “Hands Off” protests, one of the largest single-day protests against President Trump.
April 19, 2025: Over 700 coordinated rallies under the “50501” movement, emphasizing local empowerment and national resistance.
The movement had largely broad messaging and goals, advocating for the impeachment of Donald Trump, investigating DOGE and Elon Musk’s role in the federal government, protecting LGBTQIA rights, reinstating military aid to Ukraine, providing support to Palestine, and lifting tariffs that have been negatively impacting the US and world economies. The implosion of /r/50501
Despite its rapid growth and nationwide reach, the 50501 Movement has recently faced internal conflicts, particularly between Reddit moderators and the national organization, including disputes over who has authority to represent the movement and make decisions on behalf of its members, allegations that Reddit moderators have been censoring dissenting opinions and removing posts critical of the national organization, and calls for greater transparency in decision-making processes.
A short summary of the controversy: https://old.reddit.com/r/50501Movement/comments/1k7c2u6/a_short_summary_of_the_controversy/
Below are posts that have been pinned to the /r/50501 subreddit after the restriction and closure of the subreddits. I have copy/pasted them to preserve in case of deletion.
EMERGENT (posted by StrWtchng): https://old.reddit.com/r/50501/comments/1k7a5dh/emergent/
NOTE TO THE WORLD
Hello everyone this is my final address to the community as the original creator. First, my role as the top moderator position here on Reddit has always been as an overseer of the movement to make sure it stays true to its roots.
This last month, a group I was unaware of created a 50501 non-profit, and registered trademarks for the 50501 name and its derivatives. They sent me a letter of intention regarding their, well, intentions, and it included a position that they would hand over everything to the "original founder of the 50501 movement" if I so requested. They weren't doing this to steal 50501, but to protect it. They seemed to have intentions that aligned with the values of 50501. To keep it decentralized, to provide legal protections for volunteers, and to provide financial transparency and oversight for any donations/fundraising for 50501.
After the call with the trademark group, I talked with the leaders of the 50501 national group (PAC and NP primarily) about what the Trademark group has proposed - and the legal filings that were already put into place. Just the mention of this concept had responses from people in the leadership roles (NPs and or PACs specifically), would quit the movement, and I was told that most of the movement would quit as well without even first deciding what the non profit status/board would or could look like.
This was a response that seemed emotionally charged and manipulative. Add to it that these NP and PAC individuals have been actively fundraising and or accepting donations in the $10000 range on behalf of 50501 through the PACs and NPs without transparency with the original 50501 community. The legal groundwork of which was withheld from my knowledge.
In continuation of my concerns I discovered that the Facebook page I first created 10 years ago when I first had the 50501 idea had an ownership change that put the page into the ownership of a PAC’s business page and another “shadow” 50501 business page that seemed to only be used for ownership of the 50501 Facebook Page. Something that myself and others as admins can't remove.
Soon after It came to my attention that I'd been doxx'd. Not my worst fear ever. But a stressful one nonetheless. So I informed them, still being completely open and honest with everyone. And again, I was told I'd be safer if I walked away. None of which made sense, as none of the other leaders of sorts in the movement who have been doxx'd stepped away or left the movement.
From my vantage point, this started to look like 50501 was slowly and methodically going to be taken over, or co-opted, by a PAC as well as a non profit with 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 statuses. And also from my vantage point I was the only one keeping that from happening.
So that brings us to yesterday, Tuesday, April 22. Through my own circle of council, and lots of consideration, I decided that a new non profit incorporation that could protect the organizers and participants of these events as well as providing a open, transparent support structure for handling donation would be the best thing for 50501 at this time. It doesn't mean ANYTHING needs to change - it just means that the movement would have oversight, and legal protections.
This started the discussions in earnest with the Trademark group, and at 530pm yesterday they began discussing this with the PAC/Non Profit leader(s) of 50501 (I'm not certain who all, I just know for sure a PAC person was on the call.) Attempts at conflict resolution were met with attacks on my character, invasion of privacy in my personal life, and eventually my removal from the national organization discussion. What followed was my decision to pause the reddit and regroup.
The pause was only intended to last until the systems being put into place could be implemented. Was it wrong if me to unilaterally make this decision? I don't know. But I do know that there is not a system in place for us to currently have a democratic vote that isn't biased by individuals with conflicts of interest from NPs and PACs, and their associates.
Later that evening, the Trademark group called, and said that they've had to release the …. apologies - I'm not sure if it's both Trademarks, and the non profit, or just one or the other. But it sounded like defeat, and there wasn't a precisely clear reason given. I can only assume it is a matter of time until I no longer have a voice here on 50501.
The list goes on and on about what has transpired behind the scenes, but the point that “national” has made is clear: Get out of our way, or we will MAKE you.
And after lots of very fearful discussion, we realized something that we think is important - this is bigger than r/50501. This is bigger than Reddit. This is bigger than any single one of us, and NO ONE is ever going to be able to control this one massive, transformative, and revolutionary movement. We are ALL 50501, and we will not be silenced.
I advise that future protest demand MUCH MORE TRANSPARENCY from the PACs and non profits, and I feel like everyone connected to either a PAC or Non Profit should be welcome to help, but should not be accepting money, or voting on the direction of the movement, or having admin control of pages or social medias related. They should have a seat at the table, but in advisory roles, not in controlling the movement.
I have no idea what’s real right now (posted by Evolved_Fungi): https://old.reddit.com/r/50501/comments/1k7agrl/i_have_no_idea_whats_real_right_now/
Another post was made, which is an accurate editing of my own messages - and one that I approved before it was posted.
There has been an incredible amount of stress running this subreddit since the very beginning. But the last 96 hours or so have been the most intense I've ever experienced. I've recently asked to be added back as a moderator, and let everyone else go and I'll take whatever consequences may happen.. But that isn't an option that others are ok with at this point.
The threats seem real. It's impossible to know who to trust or what's true.
But even people who do know what's actually true have distorted it, and they let things they know aren't true be spread because it serves their purposes.
It's all insane.
We have already accomplished amazing things! Unbelievable things!
People have connections to other local people they never had before! THAT NETWORKING IS WHAT 50501 IS ABOUT!!!
YOU ARE WHAT 50501 IS ABOUT!
All of this is out of my hands. I have tried desperately to stop it from happening. I have offered up my own safety to keep this subreddit thriving... But even without that, my safety may still be at risk regardless.
I went into this with the absolute best intentions. My only mistakes have been trusting people I thought were safe, and trying to explain things that weren't issues in ways that made people think they were issues. And the people in positions who could have changed that perception, loved the misperceptions because it served their purposes.
I'm sorry everyone. So so sorry.
And this update post after the admins replaced the mod team:
spoiler
Update
Over at /r/somethingiswrong2024, a post titled BREAKING: Hostile takeover of /r/50501 just now—co-founder mod team removed by admins is posted. Here’s the text in case of edits or deletion:
So last night the new mods confirmed it in a now-deleted thread: https://archive.is/Hdhvp
Yes, and we are working on putting procedures in place to prevent this from happening again
Admin has made me the owner of the community
As soon as everything is in place I will relinquish the power entrusted to me
CONTEXT: The previous mods released this statement the other day, explaining what has happened in the past week: https://archive.is/jVb48
Two local chapters, 50501NYC and 50501Veterans, have also made statements (1, 2) somewhat corroborating this account of events, particularly with regard to the behavior of the national organization and the Political Revolution PAC’s involvement.
——
EDIT: Just wanna throw this out there—as a super cool fun fact, the new top mod has apparently let us know that he’s actually a naturalized American citizen of 35 years
. At the same time, for someone who’s been in the country that long, his grammar is . . . very not good, but is only so some of the time (examples below)! I’m not saying anything by this, of course, in fact it’s totally cool and normal! Just thought it was interesting to learn a little more about the new top mod!
Example 1: https://archive.is/UnRaM
Example 2: https://archive.is/NhePK (By comparison, his grammatical ability in another comment is markedly different: https://imgur.com/a/N1YoGYT
)
A commenter also shared this cool article on grammar; apparently, in some Eastern European languages, people use dashes way more than in English, often in situations where we would use commas or periods. You learn something new every day!
Funally, on completely unrelated note—there’s an interesting article floating around about how Reddit has facilitated similar hostile takeovers in the past. Check it out!
LMAO they think Russia did it! Classic lib brain. Not like reddit is staffed by “former” US intelligence employees, no siree.
I like how one of them is blaming the KPD for Hitler. I don’t even think I can say what should happen to them here, but goddamn it should hurt.
Figures. I went to the LA Hands Off rally anticipating liberal cringe, especially after reading their list of goals. Saw plenty of it in the attendees, but was actually surprised at how many of the speakers called out Democrats in front of a crowd full of mostly “blue no matter who” types.
Good, fuck that place. Dont know if Ive ever seen such a concentration of smug ineffectual libs before. They went to one protest that was really a parade and they declared mission accomplished.
You have seen it before, because from 2016 to 2020 it was called “the Indivisible movement”, and it was the same people with the same messaging doing the same thing
Indivisible is actually structured and has older more connected organizers. At least in my city. 50501 is a bunch of kids trying to be edgy and have no leadership or structure.
“hostile takeover” lmao
It’s DNC NGO spawned. It was born compromised. It was never anything good
That’s not to say they weren’t compromised from the beginning, only now they’re reddit admins LARPing as democrats instead of democrats LARPing as antifascists. It’s doubly compromised by tech libertarians who are directly aligned with Trump.
good lmao, hopefully they’ll learn a lesson (they won’t)
I cant wait to see how many mirrors get set up on lemmy now :/
I can just start up my own non profit and solicit donations? Interesting.
I’ll call mine 50502. Same idea, but we’re the second movement.
Damn I sometimes wish I had the greed, lack of morals, and ambition of all those grifters out there.
Whoa whoa whoa hold the horses and donkeys and critters. You’re proposing two days of protest? Two (2)? I’m as left as you but one day is already a lot of time sacrificed wearing my Captain America costume for the revolution. Two days and I might get sweaty.
Do it.
Take money from liberals.
Feed it into communist movements.
Where is their money going anyway? They’re going to give this money away to absolutely useless bullshit. Don’t feel shame about taking their money. Use it in organising that is worthwhile.
If you’re organizing on reddit in the year 2025, you already failed
if you are organizing libs to wave ukraine flags and Putler is gay for Drumpf signs then you’ve already failed
It’s always been that way. You shouldn’t be using any social media to organize other than to announce a food drive. It’s bad opsec and all of it is controlled by ghouls.
Reddit is a wild place and no shit someone would try to snatch up the branding created by earnest dupes. I had a non-political sub once and it was pretty low activity, just me and 3 or 4 others posting. Then some “artist” with a brand that sounded similar to my sub name messaged me and asked if they could post their work there. I told them they could as long as it was related to the subject of the sub. About two months later they opened a takeover bid with the reddit admins, claiming I was an absentee mod.
Reddit is not a content aggregator, it’s an advertisement/marketing sales site. You go make a sub about your niche hobby or subject and eventually someone will try to monetize it. All these online marketing courses tell you to go create a presence on reddit and other sites.
To be totally fair, I already thought 50501 was a paid democrat thing. Nothing on reddit ever really feels grassroots anymore.
In retrospect I’m reasonably certain the guy who took over /r/snackexchange was an admin shill account. When the moderator blackout protests happened, I was bored of the generic tactic and turned the subreddit into the Democratic People’s Republic of /r/snackexchange. Since Spez phrased his ratfuckery as wanting to empower users, I empowered the users. Every day all of the rules and stylesheet were erased and there was a democratic centralist vote to completely change every single part of the subreddit. My userbase was essentially totally supportive of the protest- like a 98% upvote ratio on the posts leading up to it- and everyone understood the joke for one time on that website. The only replies were to reinstate all of the original rules and stylesheet or joke suggestions that I took seriously. Voting for the moderators was also part of that daily purge.
This guy was the only person throughout a week or two of the protest who didn’t understand the joke and refused to when I explained it across multiple messages. He was insistent on becoming a mod and continuing the subreddit normally when all of my other mods across my other subreddits were on board with the protest. The moment he voted himself into power as the most limited kind of mod, he started pushing me to let him make a branded website he controlled where users would have to submit photo ID before posting in the subreddit. For over a decade everyone who moderated had been so concerned about personal information that we hated when users sent us their unredacted shipping labels as proof they had sent a package. There was never any interest in even setting up a gmail account to do that, let alone a website with all of its security vulnerabilities.
As soon as he was made a moderator, he went to the admins and said I was an absentee mod because I was protesting. They didn’t just replace me with any of the existing active mods who had been there for years, nor any of the power users who had spent hundreds of dollars on packages across those years, but this guy who had only posted one time a decade prior. Otherwise it was a very underused account that only posted generic comments. The userbase again universally hated him for opening up the subreddit as normal with the intent to soon harvest the names and addresses of every account posting there, so the admins backed off and replaced him with an existing mod who supported the protest but kept it open as normal. That account then stopped posting entirely.
Something was really off about him. A few years prior a new mod in /r/fifthworldproblems tried doing a similar branded external website and they had similarly weird energy so it might just be grifter energy, but this guy may as well have been giving the admin line word-for-word. Across maybe a couple dozen messages I couldn’t convince him of a single reason why the website was becoming something really bad, even where it concerned his self-interest as someone who wanted to be a moderator.
As soon as he was made a moderator, he went to the admins and said I was an absentee mod
Someone tried that on a shitty little comm I ran, running to the admins because I didn’t give a shit about reddit rules and generally let people go hog wild bullying the chuds that occasionally wandered in before banning them.
The moment they made an appeal to remove the hidden mod team (read: me and my sock puppets) for inactivity I banned them to prove the mods were active on the sub.
It’s such a weird way to pathologically chase power. Moderating is such a miserable “job” that I haven’t once considered it here. You see the worst of the community and have to shield it from the hogs that make that look tame. At least here there’s an actual thing worth building, but on reddit it’s volunteering to be the schmuck pushing the death star button for the privilege of being the schmuck who pushes the death star button. When the /r/fifthworldproblems guy got weird the rest of us were just like “fuck you everything about this subreddit is terrible now and the joke should have died the moment I made it”. He was convinced it was his empire.
I was under the assumption that these protests were largely liberal and brunch adjacent, what’s the point of doing cointelpro on them?
I’m active in the 50501 scene locally. 50501 was a bunch of people on Reddit with (afaik) no irl organizing experience. Out of this has grown a mostly-grassroots organization of whatever people in a given local area declare themselves to be “50501 organizers” and plan the events on the Days of Action that are, as far as I know, decided on by the same group of redditors who started it. It’s all very local.
So in some areas, the protests will be organized by Indivisible, a Democrat-aligned group that also has a lot of local variation. Sometimes they’ll be organized by the DSA, or the PSL. Sometimes it will be wholly unassociated people.
It’s a broad coalition and the best way to seize the momentum is to be a part of it.
Fair point. I’ll keep my eyes and ears peeled for opportunities to get involved in my area.
Cool I didn’t know the psl was in with this, I retract my statement then.
Not on a national level. Again, everything is very local. The goal is that, at the very least, we can scrape off the leftist scum that floats to the top of the liberal movement.
I’m also drunk
Literally never hurts to have more datareal organizations have started showing up
Can’t let a vanguard end up in accidental leadership so they have to hard takeover leadership themselves.
Reddit did the same to /r/snackexchange and installed some really weird guy who had never moderated before/only posted in the subreddit once a decade prior. His entire thing was wanting to do ID verification on his own personal website, something I had explicitly not done for infosec concerns since creating the subreddit. Even if it’s apolitical, the admins are extremely strict now about maintaining stability and they don’t tolerate any kind of subreddit closure. With a political subreddit like this, the CEO is a libertarian who lets Elon Musk be co-chair and the top content cop worked for either the state department or CIA. It’s so incredibly captured even compared to a few years ago.
there are certain tradeoffs when you decide to ignore the past century of organized class struggle and instead decide to meme your way into overthrowing the imperial government with nothing but a string of numbers as your central organizing principle. this is certainly one of those tradeoffs.
Every five years there is a new group of kids who are like “actually the entire last 100+ years of labor and class struggle is all old shit, and old shit is bad. Let’s do this really easy thing instead because I saw protestors in a movie once”.
I’m glad young people still feel the need to get in the fray, but their refusal to look at the history of civil disobedience and direct action is why it’s one step forward and two steps back. Just because fascism isn’t dead and buried doesn’t mean that the tactics our forbearers used weren’t effective. There will never be a situation where “it’s over”. We need to beat it back down and stand on its neck forever. The second you let up, they will take a cheap shot.
But for a brief moment between being the accomplices of fascism and its victims, they got to hold up some silly signs with their friends and then tag their faces in it on all of the social media platforms aligned with Trump. Maybe the real revolution is friendship.
This hadn’t happened months ago?
Lmao, they also have an instance too, they defed us and lemmy ml
Anyways
Edit: found this thread of it on lemmy
i tried to be the moderate wing of fascism and all i got was this stupid camp uniformedit:
You can feel that peaceful protests are useless, but trying to convince other people of that perspective isn’t in the scope of this community. We are exclusively peaceful, so if you want more “direct action,” consider looking up a different group, such as Antifa or Anonymous. Violence will never be tolerated in 50501.
lmao
“Violence will never be tolerated in 5051”
Always nice to announce in advance to your opponents there’s nothing for them to worry about.
“Please don’t say no even though we want to assure you if you do say no we won’t do anything”
I surrender, but Mr. President I hope you surrender.
lol. lmao, even.
Who knew communists were onto something when they said the only solution was revolution? Surely the Black Panther Party would have worked out better if they never allowed violence.
One of the most common talking points I saw there, said with the utmost authoritative confidence, was that violent revolution never succeeds and only peaceful protests have historically.
Disregarding of course that “peaceful protests” by and large do not exist; even if the protestors are peaceful, the cops will bash their skulls in, which obviously is violent.
violent revolution never succeeds
…except all the violent revolutions that did succeed hahaha. Where do these people even come from?
our favorite liberal and best atheist, rebecca watson, made multiple videos to that effect in the last year or so
And just like everything else, they won’t admit we were right until it’s too late
It will be a sheepish admission as well
In American history, it is argued that the presence of radical black organizations such as the Black Panthers (and their spiritual predecessors Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey) made moderate reform (as exemplified by MLK’s movement) more palatable to the American public. A similar dynamic can be found in the suffragette movement (National Woman’s Party’s radical messaging versus the NAWSA’s moderate and formal method). The thought process is that the static conservative American, when faced with radical change or moderate change, will begrudgingly accept the moderate change specifically to avoid the radical change.
2 things: 1 That’s more a description of the political tactics adopted by white liberals in the ‘60s and ‘70s in the Us to sway enough chunks of the pro-civil rights movements away from the left to keep those voters from abandoning the party (but Nixon won anyway). basically one of the many things the Biden/Harris campaign completely failed to even pretend to do. As can be seen gestures broadly it isn’t necessarily a political argument for the long-term efficacy of the [violent] enforcement of non-violence as a governing basis for the movement seeking systematic change.
2: It admits in its premise that the violent threat of the black panthers and others brought the ruling parties to the table where they made major concessions, many of which have been rolled back now that the threat of violence no longer exists.
13·14 hours agoLesser evilism… but good?
Lesser goodism
Of course peaceful protests are useful! Wait, we’re talking about peaceful like the October Revolution, right?
they defed us and lemmy ml
i’d like to think i had something to do with this; i subscribed and made a few comments and then they defederated not longer afterwards. lol
You’re the JD Vance to their Pope Francis
Not even the only one. Have seen a few comms that are just mirrors
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
And where did that bring you?
Back to me
Lol, guess the soft takeover attempt didn’t work so they pulled out the big guns
From that reddit thread
we should go with we the people instead of stop trump
They’re really just there for the signs/trying to be witty.
The soft takeover sparked the whole crisis for them. They received a
after repeating the exact same pattern of every other decentralised movement in recent history. When it’s a slogan without an org behind it, anyone can register an nonprofit with the name and start grifting. Luckily for them they defederated from the scary tankies who have maintained the same message more coherently in orgs like PSL since the first Trump administration.People gotta start reading Vincent Bevins
I love this website
Hmm, I expected to see some chatter in their Lemmy instance, 50501 dot chat, but that place is a ghost town. (don’t bother, it’s dead and has some crypto-miney blockchain anti-ai bullshit blocking access)
