Was Ghislaine Maxwell really one of Reddit’s top moderators?

Ghislaine Maxwell is one of the world’s most notorious living criminals. The British former socialite spent years as Jeffrey Epstein’s partner, helping him procure and abuse underage girls. Witness accounts say she participated in the abuse herself and, even after being found guilty of child sex trafficking and tossed behind bars for two decades, she continues to protest her innocence.

But there’s another story about Maxwell that refuses to die: Was she secretly one of Reddit’s most influential moderators?

We’ll get into the basis of that rumor in a moment, but while many dismiss this out of hand as a conspiracy theory, we should remember we’re discussing a case in which a fabulously rich financier used his private island to abuse girls while enjoying the company of Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and many other top celebrities. So let’s not just dismiss something because it’s a “conspiracy theory” — some conspiracies are very much real.

Reddit’s u/Maxwellhill

The Maxwell Reddit theory centers around the mysterious and anonymous redditor Maxwellhill. They joined the site early in its existence and became a moderator of r/politics, r/technology, and r/WorldNews. The user posted links to news stories and became the first account to accrue more than 1 million karma points through the site’s voting system. Even today the account is still 18th on the “total karma” list.

Maxwellhill was a key part of Reddit’s early success, becoming a “charter member” of the site and posting every single day for almost 14 years. In 2011 Gizmodo named MaxwellHill “the most viral” person on the internet, saying:

“Who the hell is Maxwellhill? Is Max a he or a she? A media pro, or a high school student? A reporter? An editor? A dog? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that “Max” is the first person to rack up more than one million karma points on Reddit. … Over the past six years. Maxwellhill’s selections have made Reddit what it is. You could even think of Maxwellhill as a stand-in for Reddit as a whole. “

Gizmodo interviewed Maxwellhill in 2011, where they said:

“I decided to focus my energy on becoming number one on reddit. I focused on building a reputation for quality links with a style of my own: I avoided pics, jokes, and comics if at all possible; I focused on well-written articles from reputable sources. I would change the title to reflect the gist of the article, but I would never editorialize it. (Otherwise I would appear biased, and could alienate a general audience.) Sometimes I had to make the title interesting, but I would never distort the story or be misleading.”

Maxwellhill continued to post almost every single day right up until Jul. 1 2020, after which point the formerly prolific account fell completely silent. Huh, wonder what happened around then?

The evidence

There’s no smoking gun proving Maxwell was Maxwellhill, but there’s certainly a strong whiff of cordite in the air. First and foremost there’s the fact that Maxwellhill has not made a single public post since Maxwell’s arrest at 08:30 on Jul 2, 2020. Also, y’know, “Maxwell” is the account’s name.

But that’s not all. As noted in this extensive rundown by user u/bgny, Maxwellhill stated their birthday took place after Dec. 21 — Ghislaine’s birthday is Dec. 25 — and the user made use of British slang like “bollocks.” Gaps in their posting history also appear to line up with major events in Ghislaine’s life, like her mother’s death.

More disturbingly, Maxwellhill made posts with titles like “three strong reasons child porn must be re-legalized in the coming decade,” complained about child protection laws, and discussed age of consent laws in various U.S. states. Also strangely, despite posting about almost everything else in the news, the account appears to have never written about the extremely high-profile Epstein story.

But let’s face it, that’s all circumstantial. So, is there anything out there to disprove the link?

The counter-argument

Ghislaine Maxwell being Maxwellhill has been rather snootily dismissed by some outlets. One of the most pointed came from Vice in 2020, who described this as an “incoherent conspiracy” and claimed that this had arisen simply because:

“The “evidence” shared by conspiracy theorists is that the user in question, u/MaxwellHill, has the word “Maxwell” in their name.”

As noted above, that’s just a tiny part of the theory. The article argues that this is merely an example of “farfetched and evidenceless theories can whip thousands of people into a frenzy” and sympathizes with Maxwellhill, who they paint as an innocent person caught in the middle of an internet firestorm.

But there is one piece of evidence that seemingly indicates Maxwellhill is innocent. Another r/WorldNews moderator, u/Hasharin, posted a screenshot of what they claim to be a conversation with Maxwellhill after Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest. In it, they give them a “heads-up” on the theory, to which they apparently replied:

“Yeah I logged on a couple of hrs and saw all this s**t in my PM. Quite funny actually but conspiracy theories are by nature toxic otherwise they wouldn’t attract readers.

But I am too busy with new contracts after break to bother with all these nonsense.

Take care – stay safe”

Hasharin added “would you object to me sharing this reply to prove you’re not currently in prison for being an Epstein accomplice?” If Maxwellhill ever replied, it’s not included in this image.

Case closed? Well, not quite.

What should we believe?

First up, it’s not ideal that the entirety of the evidence against Ghislaine Maxwell operating Maxwellhill is a single easily faked screenshot of a private message. If one were inclined to theorize a little, one might conclude it would be very much in the interests of Reddit moderators to “prove” the reviled Ghislaine Maxwell wasn’t an enormously influential and popular Redditor.

There’s also the straightforward fact that all it would take to fully debunk this theory would be for Maxwellhill to post on Reddit while Ghislaine is in prison. This wouldn’t even have to be a reveal of their true identity, as them saying literally anything while she’s incarcerated without internet access would prove there’s no link between the two.

There are also reasonable questions about why Ghislaine would want to be a top Reddit moderator and when she’d have found the free time to do it between her other activities, like trafficking children around the world for sex. You would imagine that a member of the ultra-wealthy elite would have better things to do with their free time than posting on Reddit.

But hey, online validation is addictive, to say nothing of the ego trip of being able to singlehandedly shape the content of one of the biggest news delivery platforms in the world. And, let’s face it, you do not have to look far to find ludicrously wealthy people spending far too much time on social media.

Ultimately there are just a handful of people who know for sure and it’s not in their best interests to come clean. Maxwell continues to protest her innocence, so owning up to running a high-profile Reddit account with a questionable posting history wouldn’t help her case and this would be a PR nightmare for Reddit.

You’re going to have to make your own call on Ghislaine Maxwell and Maxwellhill being one and the same person. Sure, the evidence is circumstantial and perhaps this is all just a series of crazy coincidences, but let’s face it, if it were true it’d be far from the weirdest thing in the whole Epstein/Maxwell saga.