We’re not allowed to have our own ideas.

We’re not allowed to fight back against the ruling class.

Nicely done with the title alteration.

The original title says “challenge to moderate it.” Whether moderation is censorship can be debated, but there example TFA gives is of YouTube, which has a policy against glorifying acts of violence (or the perpetrators, I guess?).

The meat of the article is that social media platforms with policies forbidding some kinds of content are having trouble moderating the sheer amount of support Mangione is getting, and supposedly the support for the murder of which he’s being accused.

You, OP, are implying that all moderation is censorship, which I think is an interesting debate. When content is centrally controlled, I’m inclined to agree with you: Twitter, Tik Tok, Reddit, and YouTube moderation are not in the same category of midwest.social (or any other federated platform) moderation, the latter which I’d argue is absolutely necessary to creating safe spaces and not censorship. By extension, the debate about whether moderation is censorship can be sidestepped by arguing that all media platforms should be federated (although, you still have the 900lb Gorilla, a.k.a. Mastodon, problem).

Good

Simple idea. DON’T censor it. Let the people say what they will say.

I do NOT see people online saying that the Jan 6th rioters were heros.

I do NOT see people online saying that the two trump assassination attempters were heros.

I do NOT see people online saying that Diddy and his circle were heros.

And it’s not because it’s being censored. It’s not the mods doing such a good job making sure the right message is shared. It’s not some AI tool keeping people in check.

It’s because…brace yourself…it’s because NOBODY IS SAYING ANY OF THOSE THINGS!!! However, people ARE overwhelmingly calling Luigi a hero. Why? Because people in average day to day living situations are god damned sick and tired of this group of people who control our every single aspect of life. They control what we can eat. They control when we’re allowed hospitalization. They control what we can afford. They control what’s in our daily lives via the media. Quite frankly it is a very unhuman experience. I don’t even care that unhuman isn’t a word. It fits. We’re being forced to live our lives on a predetermined track. We hear the music that the corporate interests have decided can make them the most money. They give medicine to the people they think will be able to pay them the most money in the most cost effective way, and everybody else can go kick rocks.

We’re all just here wondering the same thing. When do we start getting treated as individuals, and not as potential profits? When are we treated as living creatures with emotions and lives, and stop being treated as risks to the bottom line?

So yes, when Brian Thompson died, we all saw the video, the first time we saw some guy get shot, we all instinctively assumed we were going to have the gun control debate again. It goes nowhere. It solves nothing. It’s barely discussed. Then it gets ignored until eventually somebody ELSE gets shot…and then the debate circles back to the beginning with absolutely no lessons being learned by anybody.

That’s what we THOUGHT was about to happen, until we learned who exactly it was who got shot. We found out who this guy is, and what he had been doing. That’s when our tune changed. It went from “Aw, poor guy…” to “Oh, THIS is the asshole who’s denying people??? FUCK HIM!!! HE HAD IT COMING!”

And all of us were hoping and praying that masked shooter guy was never found. Like D.B. Cooper. We all know his name NOW, but for a long time we were hoping that we never learned it. And it’s this human feeling of empathy that brings all of us together. We know that in the end nothing really changes, but for that brief fleeting moment it felt damn good to know that up in the ivory towers all across the country were CEOs who were all wondering “Am I next? Will my actions have come back to bring consequences for the first time in my spoiled entitled life?”

For some of us, THAT moment was better than sex. It’s not often that the little guy wins, but that’s what this was. The little guy got his win…and then they fucking found him.

So yes, we DO say he’s a hero. We DO love Luigi. We FEEL Luigi in our hearts. That feeling of being sick of the system, and fighting back. The system won’t allow for crowd funded release. Otherwise he’d be out in a second. Whereas the other examples I mentioned fully well COULD allow for crowd funded bail, and they’d still rot in prison. They do not represent us. They did nothing we can relate to, or empathize with.

So maybe the CEOs of social media should stop asking how they can censor Luigi, and start asking themselves why Luigi means so much to everybody in the first place. The biggest lie in A Christmas Carol is that Scrooge does anything more besides spit in Tiny Tims face and kick him in the balls as he walks away laughing. Completely unchanged.

And that’s how we see the CEO class. So for that, we hold Luigi as a hero!

It’s Luigi time!