The erasure of Luigi Mangione
The erasure of Luigi Mangione
The saga on Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange, and how tech always serves the ruling class.
Right now, on Stack Overflow, Luigi Magione’s account has been renamed. Despite having fruitfully contributed to the network he is stripped of his name and his account is now known as “user4616250”.
This appears to violate the creative commons license under which Stack Overflow content is posted.
When the author asked about this:
As of yet, Stack Exchange has not replied to the above post, but they did promptly and within hours gave me a year-long ban for merely raising the question. Of course, they did draft a letter which credited the action to other events that occurred weeks before where I merely upvoted contributions from Luigi and bountied a few of his questions.
user4616250 will now be a famous meme. "How do we fix healthcare? We call user4616250."
Do not forget me user4616250
Look down, look down You'll always be a slave Look down, look down You're standing in your grave
"He knew that man was me. Without a second glance! That Micky Ds employee spotted me. The crime stoppers bounty is his chance!
Why should I try to hide? Why should I go unkown. When I have come so far. And struggled for so long?
If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, they have won!
I am the ceo slayer that got away. They all are looking at me. How can I abandon them? How would they live. If I am not free?
If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!
Who am I? Should not this wage slave benefit. Pretend I do not feel his agony. This innocent who can be set free.
Who else should face their judgment. Who am I? Can I conceal myself for evermore? Pretend I am the man I was before? And hide my crime until I die.
Be no more than an alibi? Must I lie?
How can I ever face my fellow men? How can I ever face myself again? My fate belongs to capitlism, I know. I made that bargain long ago. I gave them hope when hope was gone. I gave them strength to journey on.
[He appears in front of the court]
Who am I? Who am I? I'm Luigi!
[He unbuttons his shirt to reveal the scares of a botched surgery]
And so UHC, you see it's true. This man bears no more guilt than you! Who am I?
user4616250!"
Anytime a CEO does something questionable; "/ping user4616250"
A musician needs to write a catchy tune to put the name to so people will remember the numbers.
As of yet, Stack Exchange has not replied to the above post, but they did promptly and within hours gave me a year-long ban for merely raising the question.
Laws mean nothing anymore. Therefore licenses mean nothing. Therefore ownership means nothing, and "theft" no longer exists.
Therefore ownership means nothing, and “theft” no longer exists.
WOAH WOAH WOAH... hold on there Circuitfarmer (checks clipboard) It says here you're not nearly affluent enough to circumvent the law... we'll be keeping a close eye on you... --BB
They're scared of Luigi still, got it
That's not what the article is about. Stack Overflow has kept content that Luigi created up, but removed his username, in violation of Creative Commons. Edited the post to make that more clear.
I cross posted this to Hacker News (which is very pro-CEO and big corpo) and it's now rank 1 on the front page, lmao. People really support this guy
(And it's funny because in the comments, people are seething "Nooooo he's not popular, look at these polls that show he has 13% approval!!")
(Not sharing link to avoid brigade)
The submission has been clearly penalized by hn moderators: Posted 3h ago, upvoted >600 times with almost 500 comments, ranking 23rd on the front page. Ranking first currently is a submission with 80 upvotes, posted 1h ago.
Even if the 13% number were accurate - that's a pretty damning number. 13% of people supporting someone for gunning down a CEO in cold blood is terrifying to CEOs.
That's not 13% hating them. That's 13% of people celebrating someone for killing them. No lawsuits. No trials. Just gunning them down in the streets. Things have gotten really bad when you have that much of the population actively supporting your murder.
Hackers
Pro CEO and Pro Corporate
What fuckery is this?
Live too long and become a villain
By this logic, everyone charged (not convicted, just charged) should have their accounts and submissions changed in the same manner as Luigi's.
Man I sure wish this'd mean all Trump-generated content and speeches got deleted. That'd be genuinely helpful to the world at least...
Didn't he confess though? That's quite a bit different than a pending trial.
The presumption or admission of guilt does not and should not justify violating the Creative Commons License, nor perpetrating any illegal behavior agains any individual(s).
If JK Rowling went out and robbed a bank, or murdered an ex-Husband, in no world or timeline would that give a member of her publishing company the right to scratch out her name from any of her books and replace it with their own or someone else's.
Stack Overflow has been toxic for a long time already. It's one of the things that a lot of people seem pleased to see AI devour.
What can Stack Overflow's motivation possibly be to strip Luigi's account? Are their private equity owners in cahoots with health insurance executives?
A connection I may be inventing comes to mind: all the CEOs making million dollar donations to the new administration in the US.
Basically, show you’re on the side of “law and order” and hope you’re not caught up in any purges.
Preemptive compliance.
Here's a fun fact I just recently came across. In the medieval times when the church wanted to remove a heretic, someone who was speaking out in opposition to church doctrine, they would burn those people at the stake. The reason they would do this was not because this was a common practice to burn people at the stake but in order to prevent relics of the heretics from being collected and giving their followers something to rally around.
I think Luigi's Stack Overflow history is a relic of his existence and something people could rally around and the powerful don't want that to exist.
Apropos of nothing, this was an article about substance from a year ago:
Substack faces user revolt over anti-censorship stance on neo-Nazis
Fuck substack.
Shit, this article is about stack overflow, not substack. Too early, but still fuck substack.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
“Trickle down economics only occurs when the wealthy bleed.”
Similar, and appropriate. The working class will only benefit once the wealthy are no longer wealthy.
Stopped using stack overflow ages ago because of how many assholes there are there.
You don't want to go to Pornhub then
Righteous censorship, got it.
Can’t have a “terrorist” demonstrating his competence and productivity after all.
The overlords know they’ve really fucked up when the competent, productive people start getting resentful and side-eyeing the system.