Reddit, Boston and the missing student

Not concerned about the 999,999 darts thrown the wrong way? Sounds like you waste a lot of time chasing false leads.

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.

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.

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_st...

Didn't Reddit make a big show of banning doxxing a while back? Super effective. There should be multiple lawsuits here.