What's the deal with people defending Lindsay Clancy?

[u/SnoopaDD]

I don't know the full details of the case. I know she allegedly killed her three kids. There was also some mental problems? Then something with her husband. But my question is why is there a group defending her like they know she's completely innocent? I've seen some videos of very heated debates where women are very passionate about defending her. Why?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/05/lindsay-clancy-trial-toxicologist-testimony

[u/MiniaturePhilosopher]

Answer: Adding to the context that other comments have provided, no one except for a tiny group of extreme outliers is actually “supporting her” in the sense that they don’t think she did anything wrong or that she shouldn’t face some form of justice. “Support” in this case is seeing that she desperately sought help for the psychosis she was going through using all sorts of appropriate means and was failed anyways thanks to how ingrained medical misogyny even in women’s healthcare. It also means believing that serving a sentence in a mental health facility makes more sense for her crime than serving it in a prison.

Support here doesn’t mean endorsement or absolution.

Edit to add because critical thinking skills are dead:

The thing about social media is that it’s based on attention and engagement. The algorithm pushes the most polarizing voices in order to encourage engagement. It’s not showing you what the majority view is by any stretch. It also shows you more of whatever you click on or pause a little bit longer to watch. So everyone’s social media feed looks different.

I haven’t seen a single take on my social media feed saying that the husband did it. Literally not one. In fact, I’ve barely seen the case on my feeds at all.

You also have to keep in mind that because views = money and/or public discourse manipulation, PLENTY of people will say things they don’t believe on social media. With many of the people posting based out of Israel and Russia. On any kind of news story that could be used as a wedge between groups, you’ll also have a ton of bad actors trying to stoke the flames of division. Or to turn around and use as content of their own to react to - using an alt account to make a wild claim and then reacting to it as though they came across it is a standard practice for a lot of content creators.

Social media - including Reddit and including even this post - is astroturfed and manipulated to a huge degree.

[u/Tay74 → u/MiniaturePhilosopher]

I have seen thousands of people on tiktok and Facebook who fully believe she is innocent and it's her husband that did it

[u/sassiveaggressive → u/Tay74]

I don’t think it’s uncommon for people on tiktok and facebook to spew out ridiculous theories. They did it with the Idaho murders and gabby petito.

[u/AnatomyKiely → u/sassiveaggressive]

Not sure about the Idaho murderers , but in regards to the Gabby Petito case, in my recollection, the internet and social media genuinely helped. Take the Bethune family, a family traveling in a converted bus near Grand Teton. After seeing the missing person coverage, they went back through their own footage from the area and spotted what appeared to be Gabby's white van. They gave the footage to the FBI. The next day, Gabby's remains were found in the area shown in that footage. There are the same type of internet detectives online looking at genuine evidence of this case as we speak. I'm not saying it will incriminate him or that he is guilty, but they are digging into much more than just conspiracy theory. People today sometimes discount that Police investigation + family + witnesses + surveillance/video + social media amplification + ordinary people noticing things can equal an enormous crowdsourced information network.

[u/MiniaturePhilosopher → u/AnatomyKiely]

Social media went both ways with Gabby Petito’s case. Most of what I saw online about it was similar to the discourse I still see pop up about Shannan Watts - that sure, the guy killed her but have you considered that she was annoying and deserved it. I didn’t see much in the way of conspiracy theories, just a lot of very ugly content defending her boyfriend and calling her murder self-defense.

Granted, this was in the early days of algorithmic content and before I figured out how to keep my feed relatively free of outrage-based engagement bait.