Luigi Mangione, the individual accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has become a viral sensation, sparking debates, admiration, and even calls for a movie portrayal by Dave Franco. However, in an era of widespread outrage, online platforms are growing increasingly cautious about content related to him, fearing that the intense idolization could turn violent.

A recent report by Slate highlighted that certain Reddit forums discussing Mangione were being censored. A moderator of the long-running subreddit /r/popculture was suspended after failing to curb the ongoing discussion about the accused killer. This action followed an unusual warning from Reddit’s safety team, RedditSafety, stating that subreddits violating content policies and upvoting “violent content” would receive a warning.

The alert read: “Today we are rolling out a new (sort of) enforcement action across the site,” noting that “starting today, users who, within a certain timeframe, upvote several pieces of content banned for violating our policies will begin to receive a warning.” It continued: “while this is currently ‘warn only,’ we will consider adding additional actions down the road.”

Shortly after, /r/popculture, which featured ongoing discussions about Mangione, posted a note claiming that one of its moderators had been suspended. “This sub has been placed in restricted mode and the main mod was suspended for approving comments that mentioned ‘luigi.’ Apparently saying ‘luigi’ is now against the rules too even though they never told us. All comments with the word ‘luigi’ get flagged as possible inciting violence,” the note read.

Although users reported being blocked or censored for merely mentioning Mangione’s name, Reddit claimed that the suspended user had allowed comments advocating for violence:

“After publication, a Reddit spokesperson wrote to Slate that ‘one of the mods of r/popculture was suspended for approving a large number (at least 20) of comments containing direct calls for violence, including images celebrating Thomas Matthew Crooks and content calling to assassinate the president.’ They added that ‘because r/popculture only had one remaining mod, we added Automod filters’ to help filter reported posts and to flag ‘certain keywords.'”

It’s worth noting that /r/popculture is still available, featuring a profile picture of Mangione as Jesus, making it unclear what the user meant by saying it had been “closed.” However, other subreddits dedicated exclusively to Luigi content have been banned in recent days. A moderator for /r/FreeLuigi, another popular Mangione site, told Slate: “I remember r/LuigiMangione got banned, then r/LuigiMangione2, then r/LuigiMangione3, and I think it went up to r/LuigiMangione6 before people were like, ‘We’re not going to keep doing this'” … “I’d made one called r/LuigiFever, which was just photos of him, and that got banned too.”

When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a Reddit spokesperson added that there was “no sitewide filter for the word ‘Luigi’ or expectation that users stop talking about Luigi Mangione.” They added that none of the incidents referenced in the Slate article were “connected to each other or to the upvote warning post.”

The Reddit spokesperson said that r/LuigiMangione was “banned for glorification of violence, and the others (2 and 3) for ban evasion — once a subreddit is banned, you aren’t allowed to make an identical subreddit for the purpose of evading that ban. r/Luigifever was banned for spam by our automated systems (this can happen if mods are approving an abnormally high amount of spammy content).” The spokesperson added that in “all cases, the bans were not related to the topic of Luigi Mangione — our sitewide rules apply to behavior (e.g., incitement or glorification of violence) and not topics.”

A cursory examination of Reddit reveals that numerous Luigi-associated subreddits are still operational. /r/FreeLuigi, which describes itself as a “community to discuss healthcare reform and related topics and keep up to date on the case involving Luigi Mangione,” remains active with approximately 37,000 followers. Another subreddit, /r/SaintLuigiMangione, has around 2.3 thousand followers and is dedicated to “the Rise of Class Consciousness” and “The Cause,” though the meaning of this is unclear. Subreddits opposing Mangione are also available, albeit with substantially fewer members.

The moderator of /r/FreeLuigi told Slate: “No one in r/FreeLuigi wants anyone to get murdered, and no one is celebrating that a man died. There are obviously some crazy people on the internet who are. But an entire community of 30,000 people shouldn’t be punished for one person’s actions.”

Gizmodo reached out to Reddit for more information.