Luigi Mangione's account has been renamed on Stack Overflow
691 comments
·January 9, 2025oliwarner
thrtythreeforty
I kind of gave up interacting with StackExchange in a moderation/power user role after the repeated drama episodes where they kept disrespecting the community's input. I don't even remember what the individual drama cases were, I just got tired of feeling slighted. Your point about the willful license violation seems like it's along the same lines.
They're in the same position as Reddit: they have a bunch of cats to herd whose labor they depend on (not enviable) but every once in a while they do something capricious and arbitrary as a company and make everyone angry.
err4nt
The straw that broke this camel's back was they edited and rewrote an answer I had posted, but left my name/avatar beside what was no longer my words. That was too much for me. I wouldn't mind if they did something like "(MOD EDIT: alternate info)" or removed it if they thought it was incorrect, but I can't be having my face and name next to words I never uttered. I've never experienced that type of mod behaviour anywhere since.
lelandfe
TBF having others edit posts is pretty key to SO. It's how, for instance, the site handles those still learning English - editors try to parse what the person meant and reframe the question or answer accordingly.
I've made drastic edits in the past... but the goal was always to capture the intent of the writer. From your anger it sounds like someone, a mod, went way beyond that?
scotty79
Can't you still delete it or edit in the explanation that it's not actually your answer anymore?
magic_smoke_ee
It's the implicit tyranny of building or contributing to public commons owned by corporations beholden to ideological individuals, investors, or advertisers, or to government jurisdictions with particular intrusive laws and policies. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to force a company to maintain publication of content it doesn't want to host... it can simply delete users and content whenever it chooses, but typically doesn't for reasons of goodwill and/or reputation. Youtube deletes millions of people's comments and videos daily because an AI algorithm disagreed with them by virtue of sentiment analysis and decided their combination of words was not allowed. At some point though, people around the world will demand a digital "Bill of Rights", even if the content, processing, and/or publication is happening on the systems of for-profit corporations... it's either that, or enough people must leave forums that have a history of one-sided, unfair, and/or unethical (while maybe legal) practices.
reitzensteinm
Yes, instead of removing attribution and keeping the content, if Stack Overflow doesn't want to be associated with the user they should just delete all of it.
And pray Jon Skeet stays on the straight and narrow.
EvanCarroll
I know my fame and legendary repute may lead one to believe otherwise, but I hate drama. I probably hate drama more than anyone else on the planet. We should _just_ focus on the facts when I post. And on the facts, I know for certain that we're always on the same page and in agreement, so long as you're right. And you're normally right.
So let's put the drama behind us.
scotty79
IMHO you are absolutely in the right here but yearly ban might do you good. This level of engagement with a single corporate site is not healthy for anybody. I know it's unjust (all life is), hurtful and evokes all negative emotions but sometimes you need to hurt a bit to get out of local minimum in your life that sucks your time and resources by just being not terrible enough to leave.
Besides SO viewership drops like a stone since LLMs became a thing. Soon it'll be an open-air museum rather than a staple.
shagie
Else-recent-SE https://gist.github.com/hopeseekr/f522e380e35745bd5bdc3269a9... and https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1hwg2px/stacko...
From the attached .csv
Year Month NumQuestions
2025 1 2967
2024 12 25566
2024 11 26832
2024 10 30428
2024 9 32376
2024 8 36010
2024 7 42219
...
2017 12 142102
2017 11 165479
2017 10 166236
2017 9 158760
2017 8 173592
2017 7 175909
...
2009 12 36729
2009 11 37204
2009 10 34009
2009 9 28969
2009 8 28104
2009 7 27731maccard
I have no experience with the writer of this post, but:
> You can't pick and choose.
Yes you can, when your goal is to stir the pot.
paulryanrogers
The argument isn't over what is possible for the powerful. It's about what is right and just.
commandlinefan
"Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small"
agnishom
Of course, people, whether criminals or not, should be attributed for their intellectual contributions but there is a bigger point here which people do not say enough:
The criminal justice system already wields the responsibility of punishing criminals. Let the convicts go through due process and do their time. The rest of the society should not participate in "delivering justice": obviously not by hitting them or torturing them, but also not by taking away their property or social capital.
ilovetux
I would like to piggyback on this sentiment to call out a common feeling in the US (and probably elsewhere).
When people are facing jail time, they are usually told to expect to be brutalized in prison by the other prisoners and guards.
Putting additional punishment in the form of abuse (physical, mental and sexual) and then putting the onus of that additional punishment on a vulnerable population is a recipe for disaster.
Prison is the punishment, anything on top of that is a crime and a lot of people turn short sentences into life by targeting other prisoners with certain crimes.
This culture of retribution runs deep.
xeonmc
Sounds to me then that it’s working as designed.
fimdomeio
This is not mentioned nearly enough. I think it’s rooted in the idea that people must be either great or awful when being both is a very real possibility.
agnishom
> when being both is a very real possibility.
Another possibility is that being a good or bad are not inherent properties of people -- but only properties of actions. Bojack Horseman explains it well.
> That's the thing. I don't think I believe in deep down. I kinda think that all you are is just the things that you do.
and
> There's no such thing as "bad guys" or "good guys." We're all just...guys, who do good stuff sometimes and bad stuff sometimes. And all we can do is try to do less bad stuff and more good stuff [...]
mrayycombi
A certain owner of an electric car company comes to mind.
tankenmate
Which also raises the contrapositive; just because you are good at one thing (or even a handful of things) doesn't mean you're good at everything.
joeyagreco
> The rest of the society should not participate in "delivering justice": obviously not by hitting them or torturing them, but also not by taking away their property or social capital.
Well said.
philipwhiuk
> The rest of the society should not participate in "delivering justice": obviously not by hitting them or torturing them, but also not by taking away their property or social capital.
Why should the rest of society be forced to continue associating with someone?
latexr
How are you “forced to continue associating with someone” who is arrested and cannot use their online accounts? What exactly does that do to you? And how does Stack Overflow keeping all the posts but removing the name protect you in any way?
agnishom
They shouldn't be "forced" to continue associating with someone; they should not change their position on whether or not they should associate with said person based on this situation.
That sounds abstract, but such concepts already exist. If you have a restaurant, you are allowed to refuse to serve someone who happens to be a member of a race R, but you are not allowed to refuse someone _because_ they are a member of race R.
commandersaki
Agreed, we kept the Reiser filesystem namesake and attribution in the kernel even after his murder. Didn't adversely affect the project or the views of Reiser himself.
belter
> obviously not by hitting them or torturing them, but also not by taking away their property or social capital.
That is the privilege of corporations....
Y_Y
I agree and would add this related and famous example:
https://boingboing.net/2023/06/10/noted-mathematician-ted-ka...
stefantalpalaru
[dead]
shagie
I see this as a trade off for moderation. The question for this could be rephrased as "which takes less moderation?" Option 1 is moderating the votes, voting reversals, and bounty reversals... or changing the user name so that it's less visible?
The tools for doing the moderation of personal votes and reversals and whatnot are blunt and clumsy and time consuming.
The tools for doing the "change the account name" is similarly blunt and clumsy, but much less time consuming.
From a mod perspective, it isn't necessarily "what is right or wrong" but rather "what do I have time to do? ... and if I don't have time to do this, what are the outcomes?"
There is a lot of "the tools for doing (diamond) moderation haven't been built out well" combined with "the stance of Stack Exchange Inc (I specify it this way to distinguish between Stack Exchange the community) has been inconsistent on social issues in the past." Running a social network (but not wanting to admit its a social network, and sometimes denying that it is, but having engagement metrics like a social network) with a diminishing paid moderation team combined with taking stances that haven't been run past a lawyer before a proclamation or actions being taken... and then as often as not going back on (or not following through with) those actions or proclamations...
And we've got problems. The actions themselves may not be of Stack Exchange Inc's direction actions this time, but the underlying confusion and lack of communication of clear policies (and lack of enforcement of the clear policies), or the tools to allow for less blunt actions... well... we've got problems.
I don't see this getting better as Stack Exchange Inc has taken very little action to increase the paid moderation team or take responsibility for the content that is published on their sites.
firefoxd
Yet, my ex co-worker who has been convicted of murder and is serving life without possibility of parole has his account untouched [0]. It's surprising because his case was all over the news and tabloids.
Not so Fun fact: a second coworker, from the same company, different crime, has also been convicted and is serving 14 years. (Victim died when police shot the wrong person). His stack overflow account is still up.
[0]: https://stackoverflow.com/users/968075/gareth-pursehouse
treyfitty
This must have been a helluva company to work for.
firefoxd
Wait til you see how they asked employees to comeback to the office... https://www.vice.com/en/article/dont-mess-with-us-webmd-pare...
croemer
That must be Internet Brands, of WebMD fame, then?
j16sdiz
This happens all the time.
ReiserFS retain its name when Hans Reiser is convinced of murder.
There is no reason to remove one's name or close their account when they are convicted of a crime.
Hikikomori
>Victim died when police shot the wrong person
You dont have to use passive language like our media.
mulmen
[flagged]
Cumpiler69
[flagged]
backoverflow
Stack Overflow's rules for bounties [0] discourage promotional bounties but do not state that bounties cannot be given to the same user or on the basis of the user as opposed to a user's answers.
Stack Overflow failed to enunciate their own rules (or - let's be honest - imagined new rules after the fact), blamed you for breaking non-existent rules, sent you an obviously mostly copy/paste suspension notice (the bit about secondary accounts seems bizarre and non sequitur), and gas-lit you with the imaginary claim that you cannot vote on a post you already voted on which for whatever reason hadn't been logged.
FWIW also a high-rep SO user and had to create a burner account in case there's retribution. We shouldn't have to hide ourselves just to talk sanely.
SO is right to try to protect the bounty system from unintended uses, but not to make rules up on the fly and enforce them heavy-handedly and retrospectively, suspending someone for breaking non-existent rules.
Stack Overflow should make rules for bounties and make them crystal clear and unsuspend you. Can they admit they're wrong - will they do this? Of course not.
[0] https://stackoverflow.com/help/bounty#:~:text=Users%20may%20....
fabian2k
From the SO help center (https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-up):
When should I not vote up?
Posts should be voted on based on the content in the post rather than the person who wrote it. Voting for specific people, whether you know them or not, can negatively impact our ranking system. Here are some examples of common cases that should be avoided:
- Repeatedly upvoting several of a user's posts to say "thanks" for one great answer.
- Repeatedly upvoting posts created by people you know because you know them – often friends, family, or coworkers.
- Targeting a specific user with votes for any other reason.
-----
The rules around abuse of the voting system are by necessity somewhat fuzzy, you can't enumerate all the possible cases clearly. And bounties are even more fuzzy as they can be similarily abused, but users still have a lot of freedom in deciding how to use them.
Usually misuse of bounties would likely just result in the mods warning the user and undoing the bounties, exactly because this is an area where the rules are not necessarily clear to users and the boundaries are somewhat fuzzy. But Evan Carroll certainly knows how the system works and is a user with a very extensive history on SO. Suspensions and especially suspension lengths are heavily influenced by previous behaviour. A year-long suspension means this is at least the third suspension for that user according to the guidelines given to mods for suspension lengths.
jml7c5
>(or - let's be honest - imagined new rules after the fact)
StackOverflow has been sending that exact email ("the motivation for doing so needs to be anchored in the merits of the post, not the person who wrote it") for at least nine years. It's not a new policy.
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/314073/moderator-in...
croemer
A warning would have been absolutely sufficient, at most a very short term ban but given there was no harm being done currently and the rules weren't even clear no ban is justified.
I am aware of vote fraud and it's ok that SO warns/suspends if one engages in it. In this case it arguably does. However it needs to be a proportionate response to the action, and not done as retaliation.
I'm also a fairly high reputation SO contributor (in current rankings top 150).
fabian2k
This specific user has a very long history on SO and the rest of the network. You have to assume that this history might have played a part in the decision to suspend instead of only warning.
DangitBobby
No real reason to assume that.
Ma8ee
The point raised about removing the attributions of Luigi Mangione is valid and important. I don't sympathise much with the authors whining about being suspended for upvoting Mangione's post, just because they were Mangione's.
__MatrixMan__
What a bonkers move by stack exchange.
The new username: "user4616250" is ringing a bell... Didn't 4chan used to give everyone names like anon4616250? It's got real V-for-vendetta vibes.
gschizas
I don't know if it's in any way relevant, but IMDB has the movie "The perfect weapon" under that id (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4616250/)
seabass-labrax
Or it could be a reference to the Portuguese patrol ship Viana Do Castelo, which has that very registration number! I think there are so many numerical ID schemes in use that you'd be able to find something relevent for any large number.
__MatrixMan__
Perhaps, but can you find something more relevant than The Perfect Weapon?
ripped_britches
Unfortunately it seems like a lot of the patriotic stories us Americans were taught in school were to violently overthrow your unjust oppressors (not to mention film). Not surprising that his story resonates with some of the public.
kridsdale1
The good guys in Star Wars were based on the Viet Cong.
harry8
Let's move this away from Mr Mangione's direct example and consider what appropriate policy should be where serious crime gathers attention.
Somebody publishes their thoughts contributing to how the world should be in their view on the internet. We all do that, me here.
They are then accused and arrested for a horrible crime. Murder, for example. This garners their thoughts a great deal more attention than they would otherwise get as now they are (in)famous.
No removal of publication until conviction.
Is there now an incentive to advertise your views by committing crime to attract as much attention as possible? Easiest way is to make it as horrific as possible.
I am thinking extremist racists will take those rules. More than one of them. More than once.
So now we're somewhere pretty uncomfortable. I think it wrong to suppress Osama Bin Laden's screeds recently removed from the Guardian online, however much I loathe him and everything he stood for. So what about some neo-nazi mass murderer? Or the copycat? Or the following ten? Is that really so hypothetical that we can't see a body count with it? Is this alarm-ism? I hope so, I genuinely do and have no hidden motive here.
I'm not buying that this situation has easy policy nor that whatever is done results in something we are going to be fully comfortable with.
One outcome may be very much worse for many more people than another, so thinking it through fully is really needed. Something I am yet to make much more than this vague start.
Online publishing policy seems like a relevant framing.
_Algernon_
This has video-games-cause-violence vibes. People don't become mass murderers because they read a comment on the internet.
dpc050505
Marc Lépine's manifesto (he walked into Montréal's Polytechnique and killed 14 women and shot several more, he was blaming them studying and feminism for his not getting accepted) is treated as gospel on incel forums. Many acts of incel/misogynist terrorism have been committed by people who frequented such forums. Ideology is not videogames and does have an impact on people's actions. You can look at the whole history of the 20th centuries' wars for another very obvious example.
_Algernon_
I don't need others to decide what ideology I need to be protected from for me. I'm much more concerned about the ideology of the people who think information control is justifiable.
Others are responsible for their own actions. Don't impose information control on me because others do stupid shit.
pessimizer
You argue against things you disagree with, you don't suppress them. When you suppress them, you just turn them into mystery religions.
Also, incels don't need a manifesto to learn how to hate women. The reason they were looking for the manifesto is because they hate women.
pcthrowaway
The movie Natural Born Killers apparently inspired several mass shootings (most notably, Columbine)
Even if media (social or otherwise) can influence people to commit violence, does that justify censorship?
harry8
Nope, wrong cause direction. Do people never become mass killers to get attention? Does giving mass killers more attention, making them famous affect anything, maybe encourage more?
"No" is a reasonable response if you can support it.
_Algernon_
You know what the actual biggest difference between countries with large amounts of mass killings and those that don't is? Gun control.
Luigi Mangione's comments on stack overflow don't even register in terms of violence caused.
These kinds of removals are simply attempts at information control by the elite, and -- assuming you're not part of the 1% -- you're playing straight into their hand.
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." - Karl Marx
throwaway48476
There has never been a case where removing primary sources results in a more enlightened understanding.
null
hulitu
> what appropriate policy should be where serious crime gathers attention.
Not making it public in the first place. Why do i (in EU) need to know that a child killed its schoolmates in US ?
oneeyedpigeon
> Why do i (in EU) need to know that a child killed its schoolmates in US ?
To remind yourself why it's such a good idea to keep voting in politicians in favour of strict gun controls?
tonyedgecombe
I have a feeling school shootings would collapse if they weren’t reported on.
amenhotep
This is probably optimistic - they're a meme, kids don't need to see reporting about new school shootings to get the idea that shooting up your school is the way to go, it's something communities are quite naturally propagating amongst themselves - but it seems super clear that they wouldn't have become a meme in the first place without repeated breathless scandalising reporting.
oneeyedpigeon
It would no doubt have an effect, but availability of firearms is probably the biggest factor. School shootings in my country (where gun ownership is strictly controlled) are almost non-existent, but definitely reported on when they occur — probably more so for the very reason they are so infrequent.
harry8
If they do so with a political point eg "you should care as much about children in ...." Maybe that point has some considerable support too. Should that be suppressed too? Maybe it should. Uncomfortable.
sky2224
I read Luigi's answers on his SO account. They are awful. Granted though, he likely wrote these answers when he was about 16 years old.
With that said: his content is on there under the presumption of CC, it should remain.
kwar13
Wait... so you telling me they CAN moderate the content?
roshin
I'm not sure what got you thinking that they couldn't
throwaway562if1
There is a certain irony in this, given that such behaviour (demonstrating that rule of law applies only to the peons) is what has so inflamed the public in support of Mangione.
ActorNightly
Don't mistake public support for memes.
This is the reason why Kamala was predicted to win. In reality, the "I don't care which candidate is in the office" was the top choice this recent election.
kfrzcode
I would argue the 2024 election was quite the opposite.
> More than 155 million Americans voted in 2024: 156,302,318 to be exact. That’s the second largest total voter turnout in U.S. history in absolute terms. It is also just the second time that more than 140 million people voted in a presidential election.
croemer
Don't use absolute numbers here, that's lying with statistics.
The correct metric would be relative turnout and that doesn't support your claim:
> In relative terms, voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent. That is below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020, which was the highest voter turnout rate in a U.S. presidential election since 1900
messe
The relative turnout is always going to be more interesting given that population growth means you'll almost always soon exceed your total turnout within a few election cycles:
> In relative terms, voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent. That is below the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020, which was the highest voter turnout rate in a U.S. presidential election since 1900. Nonetheless, turnout in 2024 was still high by modern standards. The 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon (63.8 percent) is the only other election in the last 112 years to exceed 63 percent voter turnout. If you are wondering, the election of 1876 holds the record for the highest percentage voter turnout: 82.6 percent. That was one of America’s most controversial and consequential elections—and not in a good way. It was also an election in which more than half the adult-age population was ineligible to vote.
thrance
In the case of Mangione, some stats proved his support reached the real world. If I remember correctly, something like 43% of <30s approved of his crime.
CaptainFever
https://stratpolitics.org/2024/12/unitedhealthcare-poll/
31% positive for those under 45, 8% positive for those above 45.
41% negative for those under 45, 77% negative for those above 45.
Not the majority, even for younger people. And remember, this is just U.S. opinion; people in other countries might view this differently (likely even more negatively).
Qem
A lot of support. A fundraiser for his defense is already north of 220k. See https://www.givesendgo.com/legalfund-ceo-shooting-suspect
wakawaka28
Ok, show me a non-peon who shot a man in broad daylight and on video and didn't face the law afterward.
Edit: I mean on purpose, obviously. Drunk driving hardly counts. (Nobody gets in a car drunk with the intention of hurting anyone, they are usually just trying to get from A to B.) Accidents don't count. We're talking about a comparable action here, something that meets the legal definition of murder and which was also not prosecuted. Deeds from war probably don't count because it doesn't meet the definition of murder under law (although, many war crimes and misdeeds abroad are punished) and soldiers are peons. Cops killing people on duty don't count because they aren't doing it unprovoked (when they do, it is usually prosecuted as murder), and they too are peons.
Also, to the people complaining about the edits, sorry I can't reply to 50 comments all saying about the same kind of stuff. I keep hitting the rate limit.
ethanwillis
There has been worse, such as the affluenza case. I don't think peons get away with running over a bunch of people and then claiming they didnt know better because they grew up too rich.
o11c
Probably the most common is drunk-driving "accidents"; cases for those seem to vanish all the time.
like_any_other
If you lower the bar that far from premeditated homicide, then you will get lots of 'peons' that got away with slaps on the wrist too.
vintermann
Dick Cheney comes to mind.
stanleykm
Cops do this all the time
fulafel
Seems like a thing that happens on trips abroad (war crimes)
ben_w
Why do you think a group called itself "black lives matter"?
flawn
The thing here is, the non-peon has other means to get the same result, just caring about if he did it or not does not make the situation less worse - same intention, same severity.
Not a conspiracy-theory fan or anything but this basic power distribution is obviously skewed for people who are rich(er) and that's a fact.
croisillon
Kyle Rittenhouse probably? Has technically faced the law afterwards but to what result.
Evan drowns a good point in his own drama. I've moderated against him on a Stack Exchange site before and it's tedious how far he can push the limits. He knows the rules, the process, what's expected, and he knows how lowly moderators react when they the system alerts them to infractions. It's no surprise he's earned himself [another] suspension here.
But as a moderator, what the company is doing here is ridiculous and a seemingly flagrant abuse of license. If you take contributions under CC-BY-SA, you damned-well keep the attribution unless the contributor wants to be disassociated from it. If you don't want to be associated with a contributor, delete the account, and the content.
You can't pick and choose.