Several companies are battling negative reviews and a flood of online support for the suspect in the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting.
Luigi Mangione was arrested Monday in connection to the killing of CEO Brian Thompson. Thompson was shot and killed last week in Manhattan, and a manhunt ensued looking for the suspect.
Mangione was arrested after a McDonald’s employee in Altoona, Pa., tipped off law enforcement.
The suspect has garnered online sympathy and support, partly due to many people who have issues with the health insurance industry across the country.
Several items sold on Amazon have been pulled from the online storefront according to the company’s offensive products policies.
Police at the scene of the crime found bullet shells with “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on them. Those words are similar to the title of a 2010 book about insurance claims, and they popped up on merchandise and in conversations online.
Amazon said it takes certain products down because it doesn’t allow goods to be sold that promote or incite violence, glorify hatred, violence or other intolerance.
Fans of Mangione’s have also begun to leave poor Yelp and Google reviews on the McDonald’s location in Altoona, Pa., calling the employees “snitches” and saying there are rats in the kitchen.
A Google spokesperson said the reviews “violate our policies and are being removed.” Additional protections will be added to the location’s profile to prevent more reviews of that kind, including those that violate policies for not being real experiences at that location, Google said.
Yelp has turned off commenting on that McDonald’s location. An “unusual activity alert” pop-up on the location let users know that the site had seen increased public attention, “which often means people come to this page to post their views on the news.”
“While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to this incident, we’ve temporarily disabled the posting of content to this page as we work to investigate whether the content you see here reflects actual customer experiences rather than the recent events,” Yelp’s pop-up said.
In a statement to The Hill, Yelp said Monday it received an influx of reviews and its moderators placed the unusual activity alert to temporarily disable posts.
The alerts are intended to “warn customers of attempts to artificially inflate or deflate a business’s star rating after a business receives an increase in public attention, which can mislead customers and hurt businesses,” a Yelp spokesperson said in a statement.
Updated: 6:05 p.m.
