It’s not exactly news that Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is a viral sensation. He’s been debated, lusted after, and idolized. There are even calls for Dave Franco to play him in a movie. However, in an age of populist rage, it appears that web platforms are increasingly cracking down on content associated with him, for fear that the widespread idolization may turn violent.
Slate recently noted that some forums on Reddit had been getting censored for their discussion of the accused killer. One long-running subreddit, /r/popculture, was reportedly “closed” by the platform after its mods failed to quell the ongoing discussion of Mangione. The action followed an unusual warning from the site’s safety team, RedditSafety, that stated that subreddits that violated content policies and upvoted “violent content” would receive a warning.
“Today we are rolling out a new (sort of) enforcement action across the site,” the alert read, noting that “starting today, users who, within a certain timeframe, upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies will begin to receive a warning.” It continued: “while this is currently ‘warn only,’ we will consider adding additional actions down the road.”
Not long afterward, /r/popculture, which apparently featured ongoing discussions of Mangione, posted a note claiming that one of its moderators had been suspended. “This sub has been placed in restricted mode and the main mod was suspended for approving comments that mentioned ‘luigi.’ Apparently saying ‘luigi’ is now against the rules too even though they never told us. All comments with the word ‘luigi’ get flagged as possible inciting violence,” the note read.
Yet, while users reported being blocked or censored for merely having mentioned Mangione’s name, Reddit claimed that the user who was suspended had allowed comments that advocated for violence:
“After publication, a Reddit spokesperson wrote to Slate that “one of the mods of r/popculture was suspended for approving a large number (at least 20) of comments containing direct calls for violence, including images celebrating Thomas Matthew Crooks and content calling to assassinate the president.” They added that “because r/popculture only had one remaining mod, we added Automod filters” to help filter reported posts and to flag “certain keywords.”
It’s worth noting that /r/popculture is still available and even includes a profile picture of Mangione as Jesus, so it’s not totally clear what the user meant when they said it had been “closed.” However, other subreddits that were devoted exclusively to Luigi content have been banned in recent days. A moderator for /r/FreeLuigi, another popular Mangione site, told Slate: “I remember r/LuigiMangione got banned, then r/LuigiMangione2, then r/LuigiMangione3, and I think it went up to r/LuigiMangione6 before people were like, ‘We’re not going to keep doing this’” …“I’d made one called r/LuigiFever, which was just photos of him, and that got banned too.”
A cursory perusal of Reddit shows that there are still a large number of Luigi-associated subreddits in operation. /r/FreeLuigi, which describes itself as a “community to discuss healthcare reform and related topics and keep up to date on the case involving Luigi Mangione,” is still up and has some 37,000 followers. Another subreddit, /r/SaintLuigiMangione, has a mere 2.3 thousand followers but describes itself as being dedicated to “the Rise of Class Consciousness” and “The Cause,” whatever that means. Subreddits hating on Mangione are also available, though they have substantially fewer members.
The moderator of /r/FreeLuigi told Slate: “No one in r/FreeLuigi wants anyone to get murdered, and no one is celebrating that a man died. There are obviously some crazy people on the internet who are. But an entire community of 30,000 people shouldn’t be punished for one person’s actions.”
Gizmodo reached out to Reddit for more information.
