Wednesday, July 8, 2020

People on Reddit think /u/MaxwellHill is Ghislaine Maxwell

Here's a weird conspiracy theory which sprang out of nowhere.  /u/MaxwellHill is a long-time moderator on Reddit.  He's the #2 moderator on /r/WorldNews and a prolific submitter, having accumulated over 14 million karma points.


However, he hasn't posted anything in the last seven days.  This led people to speculate that /u/MaxwellHill is the online alter ego of Ghislaine Maxwell.  The reasoning is that Ghislaine was arrested this past week, and the two of them have "Maxwell" in their names, so...maybe they're the same person?!


I assume there's no connection between /u/MaxwellHill and Ghislaine Maxwell.  I get why people might fool themselves into thinking there's a connection, but there's no substance here.  Nonetheless, users on /r/Conspiracy and /r/Epstein are digging through MaxwellHill's commenting history (Pizzagate style!), looking for any corroboration that he's Ghislaine.  For instance, he shared an article seven years ago titled "Three Reasons Possession Of Child Porn Must Be Re-Legalized In The Coming Decade."  He also allegedly stopped posting for about three days at the same time when Ghislaine Maxwell's mother passed away.

Here's the thing with MaxwellHill:  He's a semi-mysterious fellow, and he carries some weird baggage with him.  People have complained before that he pushes his own agenda in /r/WorldNews, and there was a controversy several years ago when he turned /r/Technology into a "total shit-storm" (per the Daily Dot).  He's a bit obtuse, and he seems to have no interest in nipping this conspiracy theory in the bud.  A fellow moderator from /r/WorldNews named Hasharin says he spoke with MaxwellHill earlier today to give him a heads up about the conspiracy theory.  Here was MaxwellHill's response:


Hasharin also mentioned that MaxwellHill is a Malaysian man, and that the username is inspired by a place in Malaysia which is literally called Maxwell Hill:   



Several Twitter usersmost notably Joe Leonard (@maelfyn)have shared speculation about MaxwellHill.  Joe Leonard's tweet thread has 5,400 re-tweets and 16,400 likes so far.  There have also been threads on 4Chan's /pol/ board filled with speculation.