Reddit is taking down posts linking to the manifesto of the suspected shooter of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in a move that has angered many users.

Summary

Reddit is removing posts linking to Luigi Mangione’s manifesto, citing its longstanding policy against content related to violent acts.

The manifesto, tied to the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has sparked online fascination and debate.

While Reddit allows discussion of the manifesto within its rules, posts linking to its full text—shared on Substack by journalist Ken Klippenstein—are being removed, angering users.

Critics accuse Reddit of selective moderation, as some sympathize with Mangione’s frustrations over the U.S. healthcare system, which has come under renewed scrutiny after the incident.

    • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
      704·
      8 days ago

      A defense attorney on tictok made a really convincing argument about the wording being inconsistent with a well educated author. She pointed out examples of convoluted language that read more like an average person trying to create what they think a smart and highly educated person would write. I am now convinced that the manifesto was planted.

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        39·
        8 days ago

        Possibly.

        Unless there’s an independent, non-government funded, reputable handwriting expert to examine the writing, and compare it to any known writings he made (example: his handwriting in school assignments), I’m gonna be sus of this.

      • ccunning@lemmy.world
        341·
        8 days ago

        You know our president elect graduated from a “prestigious” school, right?

        I’ve had enough bosses with degrees to know they’ll give them to any old dumbass (especially if they have the right ‘profile’ or connections)

        • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
          354·
          8 days ago

          I’m well aware that everyone with a degree from a fancy school isn’t smart or capable. In this case, we’ve seen many examples of the guy’s writing. Moreover, he was valedictorian at his prep school and got an advanced degree in computer science. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that he is smart and well educated.

          • DokPsy@lemmy.world
            131·
            8 days ago

            That doesn’t exactly equate to constantly writing well. I’ve met many engineers and scientists (computer or otherwise) who couldn’t give 2 shits about proper English unless it was specifically for a grade, sending to clients, or publication.

            Educated doesn’t mean that you stop writing informally. It just means you’re able to write formally.

            • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
              4·
              7 days ago

              For language skills, I think being valedictorian at a competitive prep school is more relevant, since that would require more high quality writing (and discussion of writing) on a consistent basis than any CS program at any level. Regardless, it’s true that no credentials are going to guarantee that someone will never write crap. In this case, we do have examples of casual writing from the suspect (goodreads, twitter) and they generally avoid the kinds of things that the lawyer noted in her video (contradictory language, overly wrought prose). Even if her analysis wouldn’t apply to every person who managed to graduate from an Ivy, to me, in this case, it 100% rings true.

              • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zipEnglish
                4·
                7 days ago

                Yeah, and not to mention tonally discordant, I couldn’t get a sense of a single writing voice or style. It bounces between looks-like-maybe-formal to completely informal and back in the span of a sentence or two.

                Now, it being handwritten and if he wrote it in a hurry, maybe that could account for it, not really any time or ability to proofread, but I have my doubts.

          • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
            6·
            8 days ago

            I take her point, but it’s naive to say things like, “That’s not something an Ivy Leaguer would say.” I’ve known many people from Ivy League and other prestigious universities, and they don’t all write well. There are still malapropisms and overly verbose sentence constructions, and some people fall into a habit of trying to sound clever or cultured out of insecurity (a common problem in a highly competitive and judgmental institution). For a while I used to edit people’s theses and journal papers and I’d constantly be rewording things to sound less clunky or just to fix basic grammar or word choice. Most of this “manifesto” is pretty plainly written, and the couple of clunky bits don’t really prove anything. I’ve seen worse from highly educated people.

            • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
              3·
              7 days ago

              Fair. The generalizations ring true to me but obviously no generalization is 100% and many Ivy grads are dummies, many smart and or well educated people are poor communicators and many excellent writers will write poorly when stressed or unfocused.

              I do think that someone from a wealthy background who graduated at the top of his class at an elite prep school would be less likely to fall into the “trying to sound smart” pitfalls. And we haven’t really seen evidence of that kind of writing in his public online accounts.

              I am still very skeptical of the police reports stating that they found this note (and the IDs and the multiple passports and foreign currency) on his person. I guess we’ll see what his lawyer says when they argue over what can be used at trial

      • Today@lemmy.world
        19·
        8 days ago

        Yeah, they keep calling it a 3 page manifesto. One of the people interviewed said it’s just 3 pages with writing on them, not like paragraph after paragraph for 3 pages.

  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
    95·
    8 days ago

    Considering reddit now has shareholders to answer to, and also considering u/spez is a greedy little pig boy, this tracks and should be of no surprise to anyone.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
      433·
      8 days ago

      Those just glorify the military industrial complex - this event broke the cardinal rule of being effectively anti-capitalist.

      • kava@lemmy.world
        5·
        7 days ago

        Those just glorify the military industrial complex

        watching a soldier’s legs get blown up by a drone with 3 dead soldiers around him pick up his rifle and shoot himself in the head isn’t really what I would call a show of glory

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
          62·
          7 days ago

          It absolutely is. A well balanced person finds such an image revolting (especially if they’ve seen the resulting damage up close) - but there’s a significant number of people who watch that and get gratification from it… sometimes in the form of twisted delight from the novelty - sometimes in a form of dominance/power tripping “Look what ‘we’ can do to those ‘terrorists’”.

          It’s fucking sick and I think the fact that Americans will cheer on reels of war while blushing if someone’s boob is briefly visible is a deep condemnation of our society.

      • blady_blah@lemmy.world
        3·
        7 days ago

        The original Iraq war coverage back in the 90’s was all about glorifying the military industrial complex. Videos of smart bombs finding targets from 20,000 ft. Clean and neat. THAT’S glorifying out military and sanitizing our wars.

    • kava@lemmy.world
      101·
      7 days ago

      i feel privileged to be able to see war footage. this hasn’t really been possible for most of human history. you can look and see the brutality of war and what it really means to “die for your country”

      i don’t agree with censoring war videos. i’m glad that reddit abstains from this. i’m certain they will be banning it in the future. in think in near future we will not get any media outside of a giant firewall much like China

      • bigFab@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 days ago

        I don’t want to censor war video footage either, but still it would be much more reasonable to do it before censoring ‘violence inciting’ text.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      31·
      8 days ago

      If you look at each wave of subreddit removals, it’s only after it gets sufficient news coverage. That’s why they aren’t removing those videos.

      • dan@upvote.au
        111·
        8 days ago

        Plus they’re likely removing things that advertisers don’t like, so if it gets less coverage, advertisers are less likely to notice and report it.

    • Paddzr@lemmy.world
      502·
      8 days ago

      No he isn’t.

      Let’s not act like bunch of idiots. It’s all about money. If advertisers see posts they don’t like, do you think they want to see their brand next to a post about Luigi?

      WE CANNOT BE THIS STUPID. It’s how they win. You might be making that comment as a gag or joke, but many clearly aren’t reading it as such. The answer is ALWAYS money.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    45·
    8 days ago

    “Longstanding”

    Which longstanding? Reddit for the longest time had links to all kinds of gore and violence, and still did when I last happened across some before I left. “Longstanding” must mean “since we decided to enforce an interpretation of it when we wanted to go public.”

    • Sculptus Poe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      121·
      7 days ago

      Reddit has become a place where you have to fear saying anything. Bots are permabanning people from subs for dark humor and obvious hyperbole. The internet used to be a place you could go where people understood that mode of speech and didn’t suspect everybody of being a homicidal maniac.

      • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        7 days ago

        Reddit is performing propaganda for the US government (who represents the owner/wealthy class), just like most other social media or news sites.

    • Belgdore@lemm.ee
      3·
      7 days ago

      Longstanding means since Reddit went public (or since Reddit started gearing up to go public)

    • robocall@lemmy.world
      27·
      8 days ago

      “To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

  • robocall@lemmy.world
    22·
    8 days ago

    law enforcement has been circulating their own typed copy of the manifesto because it’s based off of hand written notes. I’m not sure if any journalists have seen a photo or the original “manifesto”

    Reddit and mainstream media’s censorship of this story is all about controlling the narrative.

    • evilcultist@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      14·
      8 days ago

      There’s an Atlantic article by Charlie Warzel that references it to try to make his comments seem flippant. The news is heavily trying to create or avoid a narrative on this.

      “When Mangione was caught, he had with him a note or manifesto of sorts, less than 300 words long. Near the beginning, it offers the following: “This was fairly trivial.” The phrase is cold, detached, and haunting. It might merely be the garden-variety bravado of a gunman. But the sentence also conjures a possibility that is much harder to sit with (and for the internet to latch onto). Of all the possible outcomes available, the least shared, argued over, and considered is one that the shooter alludes to himself—that what feels to all of us like an era-defining event may ultimately be unremarkable in its brutality, in its inability to effect change, and in how quickly everyone moves on.”

      I feel like either of these interpretations is way off the mark. The phrase is more likely him suggesting that it doesn’t take a lot of work or a sharp mind to pull it off, which would be a nightmare for anyone trying to keep it from happening again.

      • MonkeyBusiness@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        8 days ago

        That reads like a sophisticated version of something a primetime Fox News anchor would say to control how their viewers understand an event. The author picked one specific line to quote and twisted the meaning to assassinate Mangione’s character and obfuscate the rest of the letter. It’s straight propaganda.

      • DokPsy@lemmy.world
        5·
        8 days ago

        If the transcript I’ve seen floating around is accurate, the phrase “this was fairly trivial” absolutely was about how difficult it was to pull off. The lines above and below it talk about super basic social engineering that anyone could do and the hard part of the tool engineering has already been done.

    • robocall@lemmy.world
      65·
      8 days ago

      “To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

  • yarr@feddit.nlEnglish
    18·
    7 days ago

    Classic Reddit: “Reddit is meant to be a bastion of free speech”

    2024 Reddit: “All hail corporate! Click on more ads!”

    • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.caEnglish
      61·
      7 days ago

      classic reddit wasn’t even about any type of speech(in the comments), it was a news aggregator site. Once it became “social media” it went off the fucking rails.

  • JoYo 🇺🇸@lemmy.mlEnglish
    148·
    8 days ago

    the manifesto is fake anyways. the NYPD wrote it and y’all just believe anything they tell you. fucking monopoly money? that’s some batman villain shit only a blue blood could think of.