Endless Thread - Nothing Violent

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

There's a conspiracy theory on Reddit right now suggesting that Reddit is using aggressive tools to hide posts praising or supporting Luigi Mangione's alleged execution-style killing of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Endless Thread looks at what is going on with Luigi memes on this platform: the Nintendo character memes… and the other ones. Show notes: A Reddit moderation tool is flagging ‘Luigi’ as potentially violent content (The Verge) Reddit will warn users who repeatedly upvote banned content (The Verge) What's the deal with all of these Luigi themed posts saying "nothing violent going on here"? (r/OutOfTheLoop) Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and Ben Brock Johnson. It was edited by Meg Cramer, and hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Amory, are you a Luigi, I don't know his last name, Luigi the Plummer? Are you a Luigi the Plummer meme connoisseur? I like only faintly know who Luigi really is, so no, but I appreciate them. And I like that guy. Yeah, he's eminently likable. Would you call yourself a connoisseur?

Well, I will say this. There is a Luigi meme that I've always loved, and that is the Nintendo 64 character, or, you know, Nintendo character, looking over his shoulder in Mario Kart after he has, like, busted up another player in the gameplay. You know Mario Kart, right? You've played Mario Card, I assume, at some point.

And Luigi, as we all know, Mario's, I would say, cooler brother. More handsome, brother. More handsome? Yeah, I'd say he's more handsome. Yeah. His mustache is a little bit longer, I think. Anyway, there's this meme of Luigi basically busting up Wario in the gameplay, and then like a slow-mo of him driving past and looking back over his shoulders.

Mm-hmm. Luigi is such like a wholesome character. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So to watch Luigi like ice somebody from behind and then sort of like give them the glare as he drives by, there's something sort of uncharacteristic and thus funny about that. Because if you've pissed Luigi off, you've really done something wrong.

You've really done something wrong, which I love the way you say that. Yeah. So for the vast majority of Reddit history, we've had one kind of Luigi meme based off the Nintendo character. And like any good meme template, the subject matter is flexible, right? Could be about anything. But over the last month, we've been seeing a new kind of Luigi meme. And for a lot of people, this new kind of meme is a little mysterious. Okay, so here's another one that's really more similar to what we have seen.

happening recently on Reddit, which is, I would say, very different, or at least it's new, and there's some new sort of characteristics of it. So the other one is this picture of what looks like sort of like a New York City pizzeria. And it says Luigi's Pizzeria. And it does have a mustache on it. Yeah, I just noticed that. Yes. On the sign and in the window. But the caption to this meme, and this was, you know, this was posted 24 days ago. At the time that we're recording this at least.

At the time that we're recording this. So like at the beginning of March, this was posted. And the Redditor caption is Nothing Violent, just a great little pizza place in Canada. Mm-hmm. And the Nothing Violent is the thing that's kind of interesting here. Were you able to find some Luigi memes in preparation of this conversation? I got memes. All right.

So do you want to describe the picture? Ooh, yeah, I saw this one too. So this is just like, it looks like somebody's passenger seat. And it has a Nintendo-style corduroy, green corduroy hat sitting on the seat. That corduroy. Yes, it is, zoom in, it's corduroy. Yeah, it's corduroy. No, it is not.

Oh no, you're right. You're right. That's just the internet playing tricks on my old eyes. But it's a green hat. I wish it was corduroy. And it has a green L on it in the style of Nintendo. And again, nothing violent. Just a picture of my work hat. Yeah. And this is in the Kitchen Confidential subreddit, which is for people who work in the food industry, the hospitality industry. And so it's interesting that as we discuss these memes more, the fact that there is Luigi content, Nintendo Luigi content being posted in Kitchen Confidential, still with this nothing violent at the top of the caption. It's interesting that this is like making its way around subredditual. Redits. And that I wanted to point out a couple of comments on this. I'm seeing one right now. Maybe you're seeing the same one. I'm looking at Nader Potatoer.

Potato says, Reddit algorithm would be really angry if it knew what this post is about. Yes. So it's just their work hat, right? Yeah, right. And then there's another commenter that says, Reddit banned me for three days for asking if we need to specify which one we mean. Yes, as in which Luigi, we would assume.

Right. Yes. Right. So there is a conspiracy theory on Reddit right now, suggesting that basically Reddit is using aggressive tools to disappear, squash, limit, and deprioritize posts praising or supporting Luigi Mangione's alleged execution style killing of the CEO. of United Healthcare Brian Thompson. And as a show that is no longer partnered with Reddit, but used to be, and is pretty interested in how political and free speech is dealt with in a very politically charged environment, which, alas, we are definitely in right now.

Mm-hmm. We want to know what is going on with Luigi on this platform, the Nintendo Luigi memes and the other ones. And how should we think about violent language on Reddit and other online platforms, especially in a world where there are very serious issues involving free speech in America and how it is under attack? I'm a wario Ben Brock Johnson and I'm going to win. I'm Yoshi, Mary Siebertson, and this is endless thread.

We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR. Today's episode, Nothing Violent. just a discussion of Luigi and free speech on the front page of the internet. So for some people, this story started with this post. It's on a subreddit called Out of the Loop, for people who are feeling out of the loop. The caption is, what's the deal with all these Luigi-themed posts saying, quote-unquote, nothing violent going on here? And then the body of the post says,

I've been seeing a lot of posts referencing something about Luigi and the title saying something along the lines of, nothing violent here, just a delicious pizza place, or just this Luigi hat. I'm sure it has to be related to Luigi Mangione, but I've got to be missing something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what this Reddeter was missing is that a week before they posted, Reddit had put a new policy into place. The policy was that Reddit would start warning users who upvote content that is banned for violating the site's policies. So not just taking action against the person who posted the content, the O.P. but also the people who are essentially saying, yep, this is good, here's my updute.

I was also curious about this policy change. I had watched this policy change, and I was watching it play out on the site because a bunch of users discovered all of a sudden that they couldn't upvote things. The upvote button itself was kind of grayed out for them. And often what happens on Reddit is you don't necessarily know about the policy change

before they start to roll it out because of the kind of size of the web, and the functionality of the website, they kind of test stuff before they pull the trigger to make it happen across the whole site. Not to use the violent phrasing of pulling the trigger here, but I was already posting about this. So like days before, the other user posted, you know, why are people making all these memes about nothing violent with Luigi, the cartoon character or the Nintendo character? I had posted about this on Reddit in the Change My View subreddit. And we should say that you made this post with just your opinion, as is the tradition of R slash change my view, just to see whether people would agree or have thoughts, not realizing

that you were going to get a big response or that we were going to talk about it in an episode. Okay, go on. So what I had posted, which was, you know, it was a bit of a, you know, it was a bit edgy. But what I had posted to see what, you know, how people would react was changed. my view, the new Reddit upvote rules are about Luigi. Obviously, not the Nintendo character, but Luigi Mangione. I believe the new upvote rules are about Luigi Mangione. It's a control tactic.

They're scared by how popular he was. Simply deleting posts would have completely emptied the front page for weeks. Now they can police popularity by banning people for upvoting things deemed, quote, unquote, violent or quote, unquote, offensive. But it's really just a control tactic to protect against the next thing that. happens that's extremely popular but not good for business, aka advertising on the platform. So this is what I posted. This post, you know, it wasn't like crazy popular, but it got a thousand up votes and 165 comments or thereabouts.

And a lot of people had a lot to say about it. So I'm looking through the comments. One person says, Reddit has had an issue with certain subs promoting violent extremism for a long time now. They're just trying to clean up their act now that they're publicly traded. Another person says, it's not just about him. I'm sure he plays a part, but all the stuff about Musk, Trump, and any other political figure read Republicans plus guillotines, etc., is the main thing.

Okay. And then the top commenter says, I'm not too sure with regards to the same. to your thesis. They recently banned the white people Twitter sub for promoting violence against Elon's Doge team. There were upvoted comments of people threatening or advocating violence against members of his team. And I think they decided that these comments being upvoted, which gave them more reach, was a bad thing, too. That was one of the biggest subs, too, and we haven't seen any sub-bans because of Luigi. Yeah, so this was a comment that kind of like changed my view. I was like, oh, maybe it's about white people Twitter.

Around the time that all this discussion was happening, there was this other thing happening. People were talking a lot about, and still are, about Elon Musk's Doge, Department of Government Efficiency, and how employees of Doge were doing huge amounts of damage to digital government systems by going in and messing around with them. and the R-slash white people Twitter subreddit, which is a massive subreddit, that's just really about, you know, sharing funny tweets, ended up having users post about committing violence against members of Doge. And also, apparently, we're posting sort of identifying information about some of those Doge workers. and Elon Musk claimed comments made by the site's users about his employees were breaking the law and Reddit, which declined to comment about this, but did make a public post that had made

following the ban, maybe, according to some, caved to Elon Musk's complaints. Over the last few days, said the public post, we've seen an increase in content in several communities that violate Reddit's rules. The post reads, debate and dissent are welcome on Reddit, threats and doxing are not. So this was Reddit sort of like acknowledging that what was happening in white people Twitter, which is the subreddit that got banned for 72 hours, was against the Reddit rules, the sitewide rules. And that's why the subreddit got banned. They didn't specifically mention Doge or Elon Musk, but that seems to have been what that subreddit ban was about. And so it's interesting that that was happening at the same time is this rule about violence

and violent content being put into place. And I think, you know, this user was good at least convincing me that that was part of it. And then it may have been about that, about Elon Musk and Doge and white people Twitter and not specifically Luigi. Okay. And that actually feels pretty relevant because we know that these tech gazillionaires talk to each other. And this was born out in a story from just a couple weeks ago about Elon Musk's infamous photo from the Trump inauguration where he was making a Nazi salute, which he denied.

was a Nazi salute, but yeah. Right after that, the moderators of more than 100 different subreddits banned links to X because people often post a link to X to get people to more information. So they said no more. And this list included the NFL subreddit, the Nintendo subreddit, the military subreddit. According to The Verge, Musk allegedly had texted Reddit C-E-E-E-E. Steve Huffman to complain about this to say like, your subreddits are banning links to my platform. Yeah.

And it was shortly after that that the white people Twitter subreddit got banned. We'll be right back. Support for this podcast comes from Nature is the Solution, a podcast from the Nature Conservancy. When it comes to the environment, it's easy to focus on doom and gloom. But that's not the whole story, especially when there are so many projects. working towards bringing people and nature together. In this moment, optimism isn't naive. It's necessary.

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at WBUR.org slash creative studio. All right. So we're talking about the possible explanation of a reason for Reddit's new policy on upvoting violent content. So, you know, again, like, this does seem like the right

explanation, right? Like, you know, Elon Musk, very powerful figure, pressure on Reddit equals Reddit change. But I will say that all of this stuff like was happening at the same time when there were these, like, there was a flurry of news stories about all of this. And after I, you know, rewarded the Delta, which is what you do when somebody changes your view and the change my view subreddit, to that commenter who said, I think it's actually. about white people Twitter. It's not about Luigi Mangione. There was another story that came out around the same time, another story from the Verge saying Luigi, even in a Nintendo context, is being flagged as potential violence. So this is according to a mod from the R-slash-pop culture

subreddit. And they say that they noticed Reddit's auto-moderator system, so these bots that basically like, you know, help the moderators of various subreddits do their work. They saw this system flag a post about the video game Luigi's Mansion 3 because it included the word Luigi, giving the moderator instructions to, quote, check for violence. I thought the bots were better than that, man. I thought we were, I thought we could do better. Yeah, context matters, right? You know, bots aren't always going to be good with context.

Apparently, a Reddit spokesperson who asked not to be named said that there's not a site-wide filter for the word Luigi. But apparently Luigi content, even completely unrelated to Luigi Mangione, has been flagged by the system as potentially violent. And, you know, there's some complexity to this story in terms of, like, what was going on in the pop culture subreddit at the time. And, you know, there was like, I guess, a sort of dearth of moderators in the subreddit. And some of the auto mod features kicked in basically like, you know, having the bots do more of the moderating work, which resulted in this Luigi getting flagged as violent content. But again, like any use of this kind of tool in this way, I think it gets really complicated because you're taking a word, a simple word, a simple name like Luigi. And you're

basically saying that this word will be disappeared from the site or slightly disappeared or automatically flagged as violent. And I feel like that's, that's really scary, I would say, to me. Yeah, also it's a popular man's name in at least one country. Oh, come on. How many Luigi's do you know? Come on. I know more than you would think. One of the posts that I, like Luigi-related posts that I came across when I was looking for Luigi Memes, was in the 3D printing subreddit, which is huge, by the way. They have more than 3 million members. And someone made a 3-D-printed Luigi, the Nintendo character, but wearing a green,

hoodie with the hood up, like those surveillance photos that you saw of Luigi Mangione. And the caption is just, it's Luigi. And so that, you know, a post like that is still up. It was made before all of this, you know, this new policy went into effect. But the moderator did post and sticky a comment, so like pinned a comment that says, guys, it's a 3D printed statue and well within free speech to like Luigi. We have like 10 reports on this post. Please stop. If you have a problem, you can discuss it here or in a DM.

But I guess this person got requests to take it down and they said, nope, free speech staying up in the 3D printing subreddit. So yeah, it does feel like we're at this. We're in a real free speech battle right now. I don't think bots are the answer. I will say that. Yeah, it gets really complicated because, like, look, words matter and words are complicated, right? Like, I can see a number of words would be, would and could be, and maybe should be discouraged from being used on a site like Reddit, right? But if those words are at the center of debate about the way that the world should be, it's really, it gets really,

really complicated in terms of like how you might moderate a site as large as Reddit. Yeah, and it gets scary when, and this is not the first time that we've brought this up on the show, but it gets scary when one fragile, upset tech billionaire can influence another platform. And like we said, we don't know if that's for sure what happened here. but we have seen examples of tech platforms bowing to the whims of other powerful people. And here's the nuance for me. Take another name, Hitler.

If you build a bot that takes every instance of that name across a platform built for conversation that is largely moderated by volunteers, and you flag any comment or post that mentions this name, Hitler, as potentially violent, you get into this really tricky world of chilling speech because you create a whole category of posts that need to be reviewed because they might be bad news. And doing that is not a neutral thing. So as a moderator, it's very likely that you're not going to want to deal with all of that.

So you might actually ban or disappear language that, you know, might still be part of an important discourse. Maybe it's reminding people of the history of Nazis in Hitler, for instance. And as a user, you're maybe not going to want to deal with being warned or banned either. So you might avoid bringing up history in conversation. Okay. So it's important to say that we reached out to Reddit with very direct questions about all of this, whether Luigi Mangione, Elon Musk, and the white people Twitter subreddit being temporarily banned, whether any of it played a role in inspiring new policy.

And a Reddit spokesperson responded and said no. We also asked if the name Luigi Mangione or just Luigi was being flagged as, quote unquote, potentially violent across the site. The spokesperson said no, and that volunteer moderators can choose to flag certain words with auto-moderator tools, and that Reddit employees don't take part in that review process. However, in the case we mentioned involving the popular, culture subreddit, admins did intervene and turned on automod and said that they did flag the word Luigi as potentially violent. The company said at the time, the subreddit, which is large, had only one moderator, and the moderator wasn't active when the automod flag of Luigi was turned on.

Reddit says this automod setting was turned off once new moderators were added to the pop culture subreddit. The Reddit spokesperson wanted to stress that flagging content just requires further review and doesn't automatically result in consequences for users. So we want to know. What are you hearing and seeing on Reddit about content getting flagged or removed? And what do you think about it? And if you want to just send us Luigi memes like Luigi the Nintendo 64 character, we are also a game for that. Oh yeah. Or Yoshi. Yoshi memes, really. More Yoshi. Princess Peach memes.

Sure. Bring on Princess Peach. Whatever you want. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR. Today's episode was produced by me and Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson. And me, Amory Severson, mix and sound design by Paul Vicus, our production manager. Our managing producer is Summit to Yoshi. The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Franny Monaghan, and Meg Kramer.

If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery or other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, you can hit us up at endless thread at WBUR.org. Also, as we mentioned recently, if you want to get in touch via secure channels, you can do that at WBUR Secure Tips at proton.m. You can also call or text us via signal at 646-456-9095. Hope to hear from you. Bye