Reddit, Boston and the missing student
newstatesman.com
newstatesman.com
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.
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-re...
[2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuoZWb9gqv0
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Man_(JFK_assassination...
The decrying and predictions of Bad Things Happening have been happening since before this whole Boston thing started, predicting exactly this outcome. It's part of the reason why Reddit's admins have a policy against "doxing". I like to call that "experience" rather than "hindsight".
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."
In light of what we know, this Reddit thread makes for such sad reading. http://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1cn9ga/is_missing_st...
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
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.
If course they can - not Reddit the company, but a group of individuals sure can. We have petitions, donations, and signature-gathering for all kinds stuff, why not for this? Make it large, make it public, make it heart-felt - let's stand publicly behind the Tripathis and say this was wrong and offer anything we can do to help.
I would urge everyone who hasn't already to watch the video they put together, pleading with Sunil to come home. You couldn't find a more likable collection of people, it is really really touching. Let's return the favor. Let's apologize. Let's try and help finding him.
I have a hard time finding the collective responsibility of "the internet" materially different from "the media".
Should the family also take legal action against the ISPs of the Reddit users involved, simply for "facilitating" this garbage?
I see a clear trend, on HN and elsewhere, of technologically clued-in people who simply do not share what we wrongfully assumed were common values amongst techies.
This includes the notion that services should be punished for things their users do, something that we used to attribute to people who simply didn't understand what something like Reddit is, or how the internet works.
I would suggest that assumption was based on underestimating how much of those values were not just informed by technological insight but Western cultural values, but I'm probably on thin ice there.
The internet does not give you the right to spread untrue statements about people which you were negligent in discovering the truth of before repeating - such as that they committed a specific act of terrorism.
Too bad Reddit will surely be too busy not collecting such information just in case the evil government happens to ask for it, eh? You can never be too cautious about that government, you know.
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.
Making that distinction may be hard for fossilized media and politicians, but it should come natural to anybody on HN.
You have to remember the context: Some nearly anonymous asshole points a finger and says that so-and-so is the bomber, with no real concrete evidence. It's practically a farce at that stage, only idiots could fall for that.
Unfortunately for Sunil, there are a lot of idiots online (and in the media, apparently).
On the other hand, entities like the NY Post should have known better. They presumably pay "journalists" to fact-check (so there's a higher standard of quality expected), and they understand that it imparts a higher expectation on what they do print, which means it's more likely that people would believe such an accusation.
So Sunil might even have a case against professional outfits like these, especially since he wasn't previously a public figure. But against random people from the Internet there's not really any hope of a libel charge sticking.
Maybe some states would have "cyber-bullying" legislation that would apply though (assuming it's not struck down as unconstitutional).
It depends on the particulars of the accusation, but probably not.
Saying "I think you killed her" is a statement of opinion. If that is an opinion the speaker legitimately holds, then it would probably not be considered libel. Generally libel needs to be both false and malicious.
Proving malice is hard, so libel/slander is usually a difficult case to win. That's one of the things that makes it different than other venues, where intent (and sometimes even falsity) are not required.
Any organisation, be a website, news organization, or Government, should be punished if it tolerates a Kangaroo court culture. Else we risk exposing just about any innocent person (us and our families included) to permanent damage.
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.
I agree that blaming Reddit is ridiculous. It seems like so many people have their panties in a wad about this, and I'm struggling to understand their expectations. Outliers aside, can one really consider the /r/findbostonbombers folks in the wrong? Do they require legal authority (per above definition) to do what they are doing? Are they violating any laws? Sure, they may include idiots espousing falsehoods in "witchhunt" fashion...but isn't the onus on readers to realize the difference between sources (social media vs. legitimate new reporting)?
This is crowdsourcing in action. It's changing the dynamics of news and dissemination of information. I foresee the development of some type of guidelines or protocol for future "Current events of significance," perhaps denoted similarly as on Wikipedia [1]. If not imposed by the content providers themselves (Reddit et. al.), then eventually by legislation. The objective would be to reasonably control (not restrict or censor!) the dissemination of information to minimize adverse consequences inherent with the flow of data.
Spreading information faster than people could correctly evaluate it is exactly what caused this problem. Doing it more would just end up with more witch hunts.
Your desire to jump to instant conclusions about complex issues is, quite frankly, dangerous and troubling.
No, we should never leap to conclusions or immediately try to solve the case based on the new data coming in the instant it does. There is a reason that police are slow to say things and that they investigate leads before making claims.
So they don't ruin innocent lives more often than they already do - and reddit doesn't have any such care.
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.
Try being worried about the people in Gitmo, hours later worrying that all attention and energy will focused on emotions and speculations instead, and being proven right.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.