Honestly, Hacker News... What the fuck. This wasn't just reddit. We did this too. I come to HN for the intilectual stimulation and then I find this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5562909 in the top thread.
This disappointing me on so many levels. No it is not everyone's fault but this sort of witch hunt is wrong and I'd suggest we downvote any sensationalized idea that 4chan or any other hacker can find the one or two guilty parties through online means.
I think there could be some simple improvements to improve this situation in the future.
1. Break off the users working on identifying suspects into a non-public sub-reddit (or other site) and anyone who wants to join should have to read about how to do this kind of work responsibly and read about what went wrong last time.
2. There should a warning to any reporters who try to join the closed site that this is a work in progress and nothing except the official status reports of the group should be reported on.
3. If anyone starts witch-hunting in the public threads then moderators and users (it should be part of reddediquite if it's not) should point those users to the closed forum. (and obviously immediately delete anything accusing a specific person.)
4. Like someone else also said, reporters need to be educated to not report directly from Reddit. It's the raw internet.
What do you guys think? What else could be done to improve the situation?
Reddit is the unfiltered internet. I don't go there to get trustworthy news. The problem is any news source that quotes straight from Reddit - they should know better, and verify any leads before reporting.
The internet is raw, and people need to put their critical thinking hats on when digesting unfiltered data, speculation, and analysis.
First, a "witch hunt" is the search for witchcraft or some other non-existent force/person etc. Searching for a bombing suspect is not a witch hunt since a bombing suspect was truly on the loose with additional bombs and some type of plan to use them.
Second, the images reddit had were not the most up to date images possible. Had the bars uploaded their video, it is likely that reddit would have found the bombers the first night. They simply didn't have videos and photos that were up to date enough.
Third, the FBI had a press release around 2:00 Thursday saying they had identified the suspects and would release their images at 5:00 Thursday. (leaks were coming out earlier saying they had identified them as early as Friday morning).
Now, I understand that the FBI was probably following up on leads to locate them. But, they were not able to find them and while they were looking, the public was in grave danger.
I understand it is not good to name suspects on a public forum where we do not have enough evidence and I'm sure I would have been stressed had I been named, but the finger should be pointed at the police and we should start working toward better systems for law enforcement.
Those men planed on killing more people and could have carried out the second attack while the FBI was not releasing their identity. It is simply unacceptable that it took over 3 days to locate them in the video. I'm not saying reddit should be the system, but they need a better system to sort and analyze digital images and video.
The apology should come from the FBI.
Relating a specific thread to a "subreddit" and not mentioning that _all_ of the discussion was driven by users is a bit disingenuous of the BBC. From an outsider's perspective it makes Reddit sound like a gossip blog or a news/opinion site written by journalists.
What were the negative consequences they allude to? Comments on facebook? Something else?
Reddit has a history of apologizing for witch hunts. What's going to stop this from happening again? Nothing. They just hope that, "Boston will also be where reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power." I'm sure that will solve itself.
Look, people had a lot of energy and will to help (and maybe a bit of anger) and didn't know where to pour it into. It's the same way redcross makes a fortune to buy new furniture after each disaster because people want to help but do not know how, so they take the easiest path without any deep thought.
It's not like they ran to join the military to invade Iraq for dubious reasons somehow impossibly tied to 9/11, so at least we are learning from past mistakes.
What people need to do is make a crowdsourcing app for the next time this happens to better focus all that willpower in the right direction.
As much as I find Reddit useful but this time around, I really hope the owners get sued by the innocent people.
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So does this mean that HN is also apologizing? I think they should because there was enough carried over witch-hunt here as well.
Why does the BBC feel the need to plaster the terrorists faces all over their website? Honestly its the last thing I want to see, and yet they continue to burn this image into my head.
This also made ABC news in Australia.
Reddit is a platform. Why would the platform apologize for what some of its users say?
As seems to be the norm these days, the initial HackerNews comments miss the whole damned point.
Yes, Reddit is a platform. However, it's a platform that they do moderate- usually heavily. Reddit actually has quite a history of stopping witch hunts, ever since they started having problems with people posting user information, or inciting people to harass someone off-site. They've been quite successful at it, and the community is thankful.
However, those were always related to cases that didn't have any reason whatsoever to have large groups involved- they were to harass community members, some small-name celebrities, or people with opinions that are unpopular on Reddit. This was the first time that it was something that theoretically, Reddit could do some good with- and has had a bit of luck in doing this, albeit for much smaller crimes, in the past, by digging up license plate numbers, or giving advice that led to figuring a suspect out(usually stuff like hit and runs, or technology robberies).
Obviously, this taught them that there is no good time to let the Reddit hunt go. That it should always be moderated, every time, out of existence. You could say that they should've known that going in- but then again, CNN, The New York Post, Twitter, and HackerNews fucked this shit up as well. Everyone but the feds did. So get off the high horse.