
“True Crime Addict” and the Problem of Internet Sleuths - kawera
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/true-crime-addict-and-the-problem-of-internet-sleuths?currentPage=all
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a_bonobo
One recent example is Reddit trying to "catch" the Bostom marathon bombers,
where Redditors went through the security cams, "identified" a university
student as the culprit, which led to immediate harassment of the student's
family, and all the self-congratulation you could stomach until the subreddit
was deleted, since that student was innocent.

But if you want to read a great, long story of a private sleuthing gone well,
I can recommend "The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans" (set aside a few hours
for the read): [http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-
hun...](http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-
death-valley-germans/)

~~~
brownbat
> One recent example is Reddit trying to "catch" the Bostom marathon bombers

I feel like something has been lost in the retelling. That thread was also
full of self-aware posts warning about mob mentality, posts criticizing
baseless or racist speculation.

A lot of the photos posted resulted in pretty balanced debates about whether
they were worth flagging for the FBI or just completely useless. Then again,
every photo was completely useless, so every photo "of interest" that was
identified was a special failure.

For those who don't know how it emerged, there was a photo gallery posted
online that collected photos from the event. There were thousands of photos,
people were just dumping their entire SD cards in there. It was obvious the
set was full of noise, so the thread was designed to just put a lot of eyes on
these images, ala mechanical turk, and reduce the thousands to a few dozen
that were most likely to be of interest.

As it happened, the full set contained no images of any value.

The primary mischaracterization of the thread is actually about the student
from Brown University. Speculation about him really emerged from the broader
social media phenomenon. (Remember the thread's purpose, and that the student
would not have been in any of the photos being reviewed... he came from
completely external speculation.)

That theory was primarily spread by /r/news and twitter, but
/r/findbostonbombers took all the blame for it anyway, even though that was
the only place with rules in place designed to prevent exactly this sort of
thing. From the sub's creator:

"My particular subreddit never allowed posts about him — they were immediately
deleted, as a name is personal information."

...

"In regard to "Find Boston Bombers," I think the media is talking like
everything to do with the Boston bombers was posted there, when it's clearly
not true."

[http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/04/reddit-find-
boston-b...](http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/04/reddit-find-boston-
bombers-founder-interview/64455/)

Sure, it was hopelessly naive as a project, and very tiny mistakes can lead to
devastating outsized consequences when you're involving that many people. But,
I don't know, the thread wasn't quite so thoroughly dominated by misguided
monsters as the prevailing narrative suggests, and I think it's a bit of a
scapegoat for how awful the entire internet was that week.

