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Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

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I have no horse in this race, but there's a long history of corporations egregiously abusing DMCA, so it feels within the realm of possibility unless you have specific evidence to the contrary

There's also a long history of people abusing the fact that DMCA notices essentially require the provider to not verify anything—filing fake reports for various motivations that can't be readily traced.

Given that both have a history here, the big question is who benefits. I can think of a very likely motive for an internet vigilante to try to smear United Healthcare by making them look even worse. I can't think of a great motive for United Healthcare to try (and completely predictably fail) to suppress the story.

> But this is so obviously someone falsifying these reports—to be a troll or to make United Healthcare look bad or whatever

It is entirely believable that UHC is working with some crisis management firm to try to manage public perception, and that part of their strategy is to try to get media portraying Mangione positively taken off the internet, whether or not they have legal grounds to do so.

There have been so many past stories about companies using illegitimate DMCA claims that I'm surprised you consider it obviously not UHC or someone working with them. It is possible, but I don't think it's a forgone conclusion.

Many on the internet are currently in the middle of celebrating the vigilante who murdered their CEO. I find it to be far more likely that one of those people decided to fan the flames and play vigilante than that someone in their PR team got it into their heads that trying to suppress images of the murderer-hero of the year would do any good.

Has a UHC public channel come out refuting it?

Their CEO was just murdered in cold blood and social media rejoiced. I don't think there's anything for them to gain by speaking up about any of this in public right now. Sometimes the best thing to do is shut up and let things settle down.

There's nothing to gain by trying to suppress the reaction they don't like?

I mean the original sourcing (404 media) is not without reputation and you'd hope they're trying to do some basic checking, but there's probably also a reason they say "an entity claiming to be United Healthcare Inc" at this point.

That said, I'd argue even if these are falsified reports (I don't personally have a strong opinion on this - I could see this going either way) it seems very much of interest to this community.

It's also interesting - it doesn't seem like there can be copyright on security camera footage (just like there isn't/shouldn't be on AI output) so even if the claim were brought by a different party it seems questionable.

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