10 ms·

Reddit, Boston and the missing student

80 points by nreece 14y ago

talmand 14y ago
Really? Someone in the news media pointing fingers at others for reporting bad information?
- colin_jack 14y ago
  Yup, and they are quite correct to point it out.
  - talmand 14y ago
    So I guess I can expect their analysis in the coming days at their own failings?
- illuminate 14y ago
  Yes? And the criticism is somehow invalid? Now, with CNN's fuckups as of late, I could see getting livid about them specifically pointing fingers. While I hate mainstream media organs, I'm perfectly fine with anyone taking on mob justice. Even hypocrites.
  - talmand 14y ago
    I didn't say it was invalid, I just found it amusing.
rpledge 14y ago
I thought 'Racist Where's Waldo' is a very good 3 word summary
- drcube 14y ago
  Except they didn't say that. What the hell is "Where's Wally"? Are they trying to avoid trademark infringement or something?
  - jschneier00 14y ago
    Outside the US it's Wally, not Waldo.
  - omaranto 14y ago
    Where's Wally? is a famous British series of picture books that are used to play a game of spotting a certain character named Wally. They are published in many countries around the world and in two of them, the US and Canada, I think, Wally was renamed Waldo.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- gazrogers 14y ago
  And anyone in the vicinity of the dartboard is going to get hurt. And they were wrong on all counts. No bullseyes.
  - doktrin 14y ago
    >> And they were wrong on all counts. No bullseyes. The silver lining to this 0% hit rate is that it might actually provoke some soul searching among the respective communities. That would probably be less possible if there had been a bullseye hidden away somewhere.
- illuminate 14y ago
  Not concerned about the 999,999 darts thrown the wrong way? Sounds like you waste a lot of time chasing false leads.
reustle 14y ago
I find it funny when people talk about reddit, 4chan, etc as a single group. "Reddit should really not do this". Really? It's like saying Brooklyn should really stop being so hipster. Not only is it a very small portion of the entire group, but they aren't about to stop doing what they're doing because of a few articles.
- socialist_coder 14y ago
  To be fair though, 90% of reddit is the "reddit hivemind".
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - barristan 14y ago
    Yes, this seems to be the nature of communities both online and offline. A community becomes known for something like hipsters in Brooklyn, cat memes in Reddit, or motherhood paraphernalia in Pinterest. More people of the demographic with the same mindset join and stay, whereas everyone else feel unwelcome and gradually leave.
    - ianstallings 14y ago
      I left Reddit a while back because I felt this way. I'm a conservative and on that site it's like being a social pariah. I'd rather just keep my thoughts to myself from now on.
      - pc86 14y ago
        Serious question: how has this differed from HN, if at all? The few times I've been in a political discussion on HN (which is admittedly rare), it's been a crap shoot between a reasonable but clearly left-of-center discussion and "conservatives are the most evil thing imaginable and they clearly lack any intellect."
        14y ago
kaze 14y ago
Sunil Tripathi (or his parents) would do well to take legal action against Reddit for facilitating this garbage, if the final legal reports support the assessment that Sunil was not involved.
- bishnu 14y ago
  Didn't Reddit make a big show of banning doxxing a while back? Super effective. There should be multiple lawsuits here.
  - trhtrsh 14y ago
    doxxing of usernames is banned. doxxing of non-Reddit entities is not covered by policy.
  - johnward 14y ago
    Lawsuits based on what? Sure there could be lawsuits but none of them should be against the site itself.
- freyr 14y ago
  Why stop there? They should sue the Internet.
- mpyne 14y ago
  I'm honestly surprised to see this opinion on HN, the defender of the free Internet. Should the family also take legal action against the ISPs of the Reddit users involved, simply for "facilitating" this garbage?
  - k-mcgrady 14y ago
    It's nothing to do with the free internet. Accusing someone of murder with absolutely no proof could be considered libel. Edi: I wasn't accusing Reddit of libel. It's just a platform. The individuals who posted the comments would be the ones committing libel.
    - deleted 14y ago
losl 14y ago
I don't think I've seen anything as douchey as embedding your own tweets in an article.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
wtvanhest 14y ago
This will be a new facet of our culture. This crisis has been a landmark crisis, one that has paralyzed Boston for 5 days and which highlights all these systems for information distribution. I can't imagine how many new users Reddit will have after today. People needed a way to deal with this. I also went through all the reddit examples. I found them to be unconvincing but the act of looking for the guy made me feel much better. Until you walk the mile to work looking at every single person with a backpack hoping they are not about to bomb a T station, you don't know what that it is like. The police and media need to deal with reddit by making better information available faster. Reddit is their competition now and they should recognize it as a disruptive force. Just like Uber, I don't want it regulated away. Blaming "reddit" is ridiculous. We should put the blame on inept reporting and far too slow of reporting from police. Had they done their jobs faster, Reddit would have been worthless. [edit] phrasing [Added] Clearly from the up and down voting I have been getting, my comment is highly polarizing for this community. My point is simple: Reddit, digital cameras and the internet is here to stay. This new reality means that we need to embrace natural human behavior as best as possible and only attempt to adjust it whenever 100% necessary. I get that people here think it should be adjusted, but I feel that the police and media should change their strategy first, then see what happens on reddit etc. over the long term. The release of random information to different media groups including leaks and not maintaining constant contact with the public through an official forum should be viewed as unacceptable.
- gazrogers 14y ago
  Reddit was worthless. It libelled countless people for the "crime" of attending the Boston marathon whilst carrying a backpack, or worse, being "brown".
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  There is a reason the police and media reported much more slowly than Reddit - they tried to confirm information before releasing it. Most of information that originated on Reddit was wrong. It's true that the media also reported a lot of incorrect information but they usually confirmed the important facts before releasing them.
- 14y ago
sriramk 14y ago
I feel so sorry for the Tripathis. Apart from their son/brother being missing they just got put through hell for 24 hours. Sadly, Reddit can't offer up a collective apology. In light of what we know, this Reddit thread makes for such sad reading. http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1cn9ga/is_missing_student_sunil_tripathi_marathon_bomber/ http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1cn9ga/is_missing_st...
- danso 14y ago
  Reddit is a discussion board made up of individuals with widely varying viewpoints, motives, and ages...what would a collective apology look like? The closest thing to official Reddit action on this is when a moderator of r/findbostonbombers shut discussion down on Sunil 14 hours ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/findbostonbombers/comments/1cnafx/mod_note_any_more_posts_on_the_missing_guy_will/ http://www.reddit.com/r/findbostonbombers/comments/1cnafx/mo... The mod was ridiculed when Sunil's name was reportedly mentioned on scanners hours later but he/she stood their ground. Demanding reddit to collectively hang their head in shame would be like asking all of Russia to apologize on behalf of the alleged actions of these ethnic Chechens...it's a bit impractical and overestimates the cohesiveness of the group
  - doktrin 14y ago
    Obviously Reddit can't offer a collective apology, the parent even said as much. However, since there are obviously individuals who were willing to take credit on behalf of Reddit ("Reddit was right!", "Historic thread!"), it stands to reason that the inverse is also possible. In the "duh-factor" statement of the day : groups are made up of people, and we shouldn't hide behind the amorphousness of a group to avoid taking responsibility for our actions. I'm sure the family would appreciate a few retractions, even if they didn't represent reddit/4chan/the internet as a whole.
    - trhtrsh 14y ago
      Symmetry fallacy. Saying "Reddit was right" doesn't make Reddit wrong, it makes one more wrongsayer wrong.
steven2012 14y ago
I think an interesting question is, what techniques could have improved the crowdsourcing attempts by reddit, 4chan, etc. Obviously there's a huge amount of training that had the FBI zero-in on the terrorists. Was it different data they had access to, or was it simply the techniques that they used, and if so, can they be taught en masse? To me, a large, motivated source of volunteer work like reddit or 4chan when looking for a needle in a haystack might be valuable in the future if something like this arises again.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  In the beginning, "crowd-sourcing" should have been limited to anyone and everyone that had video and photos from the scene to upload them to a central DB. Then everyone can sift through and look for stuff... but instead of spewing their speculations all over the Net, let the FBI know so someone at the FBI can continue. Once the FBI had photos of two people they needed help finding... THAT is when the crowd-sourcing really helped. There was a focused mission so it was easier to stay on target. Before that, it was just a (partially racially charged) cluster fuck.
nlh 14y ago
To some extent, those that are summarily decrying the "actions of reddit" are judging with the benefit of hindsight. Here's my take: I believe the people who participated in those threads on reddit/4chan/etc. we're actually, truly, trying to help. (I'm not one of them, but I watched much of this unfold). Some folks spent hours pouring over any publicly-available images they could find to see if anything stuck out. They looked for patterns, looked for backpacks, tried to match up people to different pictures, etc. Had this gone the other way -- had one of those pictures been of the suspects and had one of the "Internet sleuths" circled one of the brothers instead of a random innocent person with a bulging backpack, we'd be having a very different discussion about what heros the crowd can be and of the virtues of crowd sourcing in the modern age, etc. and frankly, had that happened our praise would be just as misplaced. Shoot a machine gun randomly around you and kill a bad guy, you're a hero. Kill a good guy, and you're the enemy. Still doesn't meant it was a good idea to shoot like that :) So now they got it wrong. And that's going to happen. And now we're vilifying everyone. Here's where I think the line should have been drawn, and the lesson that we all should learn from this: I think, actually, had folks just stopped at the "this seems suspicious" stage and sent that info to the guys who really have details (the FBI), that actually could have been helpful. I know if I were an intelligence analyst, I'd certainly find it even slightly helpful for someone to do even a cursory pre-examination for me. Sure, the kids don't know all the real techniques or have all the real tools, but even 10 minutes saved in picking out some potential people to cross off the list can be helpful. However -- the line should have been drawn there. Find the "interesting" items, alert the authorities, and let the take it from there. No names. No accusations. And certainly no front-page-of-the-New-York-Post publishing (and that blame lies squarely with the fine folks at the NYP, not reddit). It boils down to knowing the limits of your abilities. The crowd is good at scanning a lot of data and raising its hand at things that stick out. The crowd is not good at being an actual intelligence analyst.
- itafroma 14y ago
  While I don't doubt that there might be some people who could've gone either way on crowdsourced vigilantism but are now vocally against it now that it has failed, people were speaking out about how colossally bad of an idea it was from the start[1], for exactly the reasons it ultimately failed. As you said, the crowd is no good at this, but it didn't take this tragedy for people to realize that. That what Reddit was trying to do was a bad idea has historical basis, as well: just look at the Umbrella Man from the JFK assassination investigations and conspiracy theories[2][3] and more recently, the case of Richard Jewell during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing[4]. [1]: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/hey-reddit-enough-boston-bombing-vigilantism/275062/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/hey-re... [2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuoZWb9gqv0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuoZWb9gqv0 [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Man_(JFK_assassination) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Man_(JFK_assassination... [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell
johnward 14y ago
The reddit thread started with good intents. From what I saw (and I didn't follow it very much) the goal was to name possible suspects. They did this by look for people with large backpacks who were later seen without them. The problem is that redditors are your average everyday people. Some people don't understand that "possible suspect" doesn't mean "this guy is a terrorist, get him". This mentality is not just reddit. It exist in our country already. Each time a suspect is pictured on TV, they already guilty in the minds of many viewers. It seems that most people don't understand our "innocent until proven guilty" justice system.
lbrandy 14y ago
If we are going to blame "reddit" and "the internet", are we also blaming "the media" for the cnn false report and the nypost cover photo? I have a hard time finding the collective responsibility of "the internet" materially different from "the media".
- itafroma 14y ago
  Yes, people are. Off the top of my head, one prominent example was Jon Stewart: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/stewart-tears-apart-cnn-for-completely-fcking-wrong-boston-reporting-human-centipede-of-news/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/stewart-tears-apart-cnn-for-compl...
corresation 14y ago
From TFA - "His name turned up on the Boston Police Department's scanner early this morning" Citation required. This is gaining truth through repeated assertion, but people looking for actual verification seem to be coming up short (one person could recall hearing this general police chatter including the word "Sammy", which apparently was enough, proving out what a confirmation bias is). Remember when there were broad claims of "confirmation" that the FBI were looking for the same individuals that had been widely, and mistakenly, identified? Only that wasn't actually true. The danger of large crowds working loosely together is that not every participant has good intentions, and not every participant is mentally balanced. In the absence of legitimate information, someone maliciously dropping false information bombs in the middle of a well meaning conversation can dramatically mislead the herd.

80 points by nreece 14y ago

talmand 14y ago

Really? Someone in the news media pointing fingers at others for reporting bad information?

colin_jack 14y ago
Yup, and they are quite correct to point it out.
- talmand 14y ago
  So I guess I can expect their analysis in the coming days at their own failings?
illuminate 14y ago
Yes? And the criticism is somehow invalid? Now, with CNN's fuckups as of late, I could see getting livid about them specifically pointing fingers. While I hate mainstream media organs, I'm perfectly fine with anyone taking on mob justice. Even hypocrites.
- talmand 14y ago
  I didn't say it was invalid, I just found it amusing.

rpledge 14y ago

I thought 'Racist Where's Waldo' is a very good 3 word summary

drcube 14y ago
Except they didn't say that. What the hell is "Where's Wally"? Are they trying to avoid trademark infringement or something?
- jschneier00 14y ago
  Outside the US it's Wally, not Waldo.
- omaranto 14y ago
  Where's Wally? is a famous British series of picture books that are used to play a game of spotting a certain character named Wally. They are published in many countries around the world and in two of them, the US and Canada, I think, Wally was renamed Waldo.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

gazrogers 14y ago
And anyone in the vicinity of the dartboard is going to get hurt. And they were wrong on all counts. No bullseyes.
- doktrin 14y ago
  >> And they were wrong on all counts. No bullseyes. The silver lining to this 0% hit rate is that it might actually provoke some soul searching among the respective communities. That would probably be less possible if there had been a bullseye hidden away somewhere.
illuminate 14y ago
Not concerned about the 999,999 darts thrown the wrong way? Sounds like you waste a lot of time chasing false leads.

reustle 14y ago

I find it funny when people talk about reddit, 4chan, etc as a single group. "Reddit should really not do this". Really? It's like saying Brooklyn should really stop being so hipster. Not only is it a very small portion of the entire group, but they aren't about to stop doing what they're doing because of a few articles.

socialist_coder 14y ago
To be fair though, 90% of reddit is the "reddit hivemind".
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- barristan 14y ago
  Yes, this seems to be the nature of communities both online and offline. A community becomes known for something like hipsters in Brooklyn, cat memes in Reddit, or motherhood paraphernalia in Pinterest. More people of the demographic with the same mindset join and stay, whereas everyone else feel unwelcome and gradually leave.
  - ianstallings 14y ago
    I left Reddit a while back because I felt this way. I'm a conservative and on that site it's like being a social pariah. I'd rather just keep my thoughts to myself from now on.
    - pc86 14y ago
      Serious question: how has this differed from HN, if at all? The few times I've been in a political discussion on HN (which is admittedly rare), it's been a crap shoot between a reasonable but clearly left-of-center discussion and "conservatives are the most evil thing imaginable and they clearly lack any intellect."
      - 14y ago

kaze 14y ago

Sunil Tripathi (or his parents) would do well to take legal action against Reddit for facilitating this garbage, if the final legal reports support the assessment that Sunil was not involved.

bishnu 14y ago
Didn't Reddit make a big show of banning doxxing a while back? Super effective. There should be multiple lawsuits here.
- trhtrsh 14y ago
  doxxing of usernames is banned. doxxing of non-Reddit entities is not covered by policy.
- johnward 14y ago
  Lawsuits based on what? Sure there could be lawsuits but none of them should be against the site itself.
freyr 14y ago
Why stop there? They should sue the Internet.
mpyne 14y ago
I'm honestly surprised to see this opinion on HN, the defender of the free Internet. Should the family also take legal action against the ISPs of the Reddit users involved, simply for "facilitating" this garbage?
- k-mcgrady 14y ago
  It's nothing to do with the free internet. Accusing someone of murder with absolutely no proof could be considered libel. Edi: I wasn't accusing Reddit of libel. It's just a platform. The individuals who posted the comments would be the ones committing libel.
  - deleted 14y ago

losl 14y ago

I don't think I've seen anything as douchey as embedding your own tweets in an article.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

wtvanhest 14y ago

This will be a new facet of our culture. This crisis has been a landmark crisis, one that has paralyzed Boston for 5 days and which highlights all these systems for information distribution. I can't imagine how many new users Reddit will have after today. People needed a way to deal with this. I also went through all the reddit examples. I found them to be unconvincing but the act of looking for the guy made me feel much better. Until you walk the mile to work looking at every single person with a backpack hoping they are not about to bomb a T station, you don't know what that it is like. The police and media need to deal with reddit by making better information available faster. Reddit is their competition now and they should recognize it as a disruptive force. Just like Uber, I don't want it regulated away. Blaming "reddit" is ridiculous. We should put the blame on inept reporting and far too slow of reporting from police. Had they done their jobs faster, Reddit would have been worthless. [edit] phrasing [Added] Clearly from the up and down voting I have been getting, my comment is highly polarizing for this community. My point is simple: Reddit, digital cameras and the internet is here to stay. This new reality means that we need to embrace natural human behavior as best as possible and only attempt to adjust it whenever 100% necessary. I get that people here think it should be adjusted, but I feel that the police and media should change their strategy first, then see what happens on reddit etc. over the long term. The release of random information to different media groups including leaks and not maintaining constant contact with the public through an official forum should be viewed as unacceptable.

gazrogers 14y ago
Reddit was worthless. It libelled countless people for the "crime" of attending the Boston marathon whilst carrying a backpack, or worse, being "brown".
k-mcgrady 14y ago
There is a reason the police and media reported much more slowly than Reddit - they tried to confirm information before releasing it. Most of information that originated on Reddit was wrong. It's true that the media also reported a lot of incorrect information but they usually confirmed the important facts before releasing them.
14y ago

sriramk 14y ago

I feel so sorry for the Tripathis. Apart from their son/brother being missing they just got put through hell for 24 hours. Sadly, Reddit can't offer up a collective apology. In light of what we know, this Reddit thread makes for such sad reading. http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1cn9ga/is_missing_student_sunil_tripathi_marathon_bomber/ http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1cn9ga/is_missing_st...

danso 14y ago
Reddit is a discussion board made up of individuals with widely varying viewpoints, motives, and ages...what would a collective apology look like? The closest thing to official Reddit action on this is when a moderator of r/findbostonbombers shut discussion down on Sunil 14 hours ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/findbostonbombers/comments/1cnafx/mod_note_any_more_posts_on_the_missing_guy_will/ http://www.reddit.com/r/findbostonbombers/comments/1cnafx/mo... The mod was ridiculed when Sunil's name was reportedly mentioned on scanners hours later but he/she stood their ground. Demanding reddit to collectively hang their head in shame would be like asking all of Russia to apologize on behalf of the alleged actions of these ethnic Chechens...it's a bit impractical and overestimates the cohesiveness of the group
- doktrin 14y ago
  Obviously Reddit can't offer a collective apology, the parent even said as much. However, since there are obviously individuals who were willing to take credit on behalf of Reddit ("Reddit was right!", "Historic thread!"), it stands to reason that the inverse is also possible. In the "duh-factor" statement of the day : groups are made up of people, and we shouldn't hide behind the amorphousness of a group to avoid taking responsibility for our actions. I'm sure the family would appreciate a few retractions, even if they didn't represent reddit/4chan/the internet as a whole.
  - trhtrsh 14y ago
    Symmetry fallacy. Saying "Reddit was right" doesn't make Reddit wrong, it makes one more wrongsayer wrong.

steven2012 14y ago

I think an interesting question is, what techniques could have improved the crowdsourcing attempts by reddit, 4chan, etc. Obviously there's a huge amount of training that had the FBI zero-in on the terrorists. Was it different data they had access to, or was it simply the techniques that they used, and if so, can they be taught en masse? To me, a large, motivated source of volunteer work like reddit or 4chan when looking for a needle in a haystack might be valuable in the future if something like this arises again.

jack-r-abbit 14y ago
In the beginning, "crowd-sourcing" should have been limited to anyone and everyone that had video and photos from the scene to upload them to a central DB. Then everyone can sift through and look for stuff... but instead of spewing their speculations all over the Net, let the FBI know so someone at the FBI can continue. Once the FBI had photos of two people they needed help finding... THAT is when the crowd-sourcing really helped. There was a focused mission so it was easier to stay on target. Before that, it was just a (partially racially charged) cluster fuck.

nlh 14y ago

To some extent, those that are summarily decrying the "actions of reddit" are judging with the benefit of hindsight. Here's my take: I believe the people who participated in those threads on reddit/4chan/etc. we're actually, truly, trying to help. (I'm not one of them, but I watched much of this unfold). Some folks spent hours pouring over any publicly-available images they could find to see if anything stuck out. They looked for patterns, looked for backpacks, tried to match up people to different pictures, etc. Had this gone the other way -- had one of those pictures been of the suspects and had one of the "Internet sleuths" circled one of the brothers instead of a random innocent person with a bulging backpack, we'd be having a very different discussion about what heros the crowd can be and of the virtues of crowd sourcing in the modern age, etc. and frankly, had that happened our praise would be just as misplaced. Shoot a machine gun randomly around you and kill a bad guy, you're a hero. Kill a good guy, and you're the enemy. Still doesn't meant it was a good idea to shoot like that :) So now they got it wrong. And that's going to happen. And now we're vilifying everyone. Here's where I think the line should have been drawn, and the lesson that we all should learn from this: I think, actually, had folks just stopped at the "this seems suspicious" stage and sent that info to the guys who really have details (the FBI), that actually could have been helpful. I know if I were an intelligence analyst, I'd certainly find it even slightly helpful for someone to do even a cursory pre-examination for me. Sure, the kids don't know all the real techniques or have all the real tools, but even 10 minutes saved in picking out some potential people to cross off the list can be helpful. However -- the line should have been drawn there. Find the "interesting" items, alert the authorities, and let the take it from there. No names. No accusations. And certainly no front-page-of-the-New-York-Post publishing (and that blame lies squarely with the fine folks at the NYP, not reddit). It boils down to knowing the limits of your abilities. The crowd is good at scanning a lot of data and raising its hand at things that stick out. The crowd is not good at being an actual intelligence analyst.

itafroma 14y ago
While I don't doubt that there might be some people who could've gone either way on crowdsourced vigilantism but are now vocally against it now that it has failed, people were speaking out about how colossally bad of an idea it was from the start[1], for exactly the reasons it ultimately failed. As you said, the crowd is no good at this, but it didn't take this tragedy for people to realize that. That what Reddit was trying to do was a bad idea has historical basis, as well: just look at the Umbrella Man from the JFK assassination investigations and conspiracy theories[2][3] and more recently, the case of Richard Jewell during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing[4]. [1]: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/hey-reddit-enough-boston-bombing-vigilantism/275062/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/hey-re... [2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuoZWb9gqv0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuoZWb9gqv0 [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Man_(JFK_assassination) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Man_(JFK_assassination... [4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell

johnward 14y ago

The reddit thread started with good intents. From what I saw (and I didn't follow it very much) the goal was to name possible suspects. They did this by look for people with large backpacks who were later seen without them. The problem is that redditors are your average everyday people. Some people don't understand that "possible suspect" doesn't mean "this guy is a terrorist, get him". This mentality is not just reddit. It exist in our country already. Each time a suspect is pictured on TV, they already guilty in the minds of many viewers. It seems that most people don't understand our "innocent until proven guilty" justice system.

lbrandy 14y ago

If we are going to blame "reddit" and "the internet", are we also blaming "the media" for the cnn false report and the nypost cover photo? I have a hard time finding the collective responsibility of "the internet" materially different from "the media".

itafroma 14y ago
Yes, people are. Off the top of my head, one prominent example was Jon Stewart: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/stewart-tears-apart-cnn-for-completely-fcking-wrong-boston-reporting-human-centipede-of-news/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/stewart-tears-apart-cnn-for-compl...

corresation 14y ago

From TFA - "His name turned up on the Boston Police Department's scanner early this morning" Citation required. This is gaining truth through repeated assertion, but people looking for actual verification seem to be coming up short (one person could recall hearing this general police chatter including the word "Sammy", which apparently was enough, proving out what a confirmation bias is). Remember when there were broad claims of "confirmation" that the FBI were looking for the same individuals that had been widely, and mistakenly, identified? Only that wasn't actually true. The danger of large crowds working loosely together is that not every participant has good intentions, and not every participant is mentally balanced. In the absence of legitimate information, someone maliciously dropping false information bombs in the middle of a well meaning conversation can dramatically mislead the herd.