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Reddit, Boston and the missing student

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Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#31

Post by sirobviouspoint »

wtvanhest wrote: post #15

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#32

Post by sirobviouspoint »

mpyne wrote: post #25
kaze wrote: post #8

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.

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?

I'd file a suit against the people who libelous comments, such as asserting that he factually was the bomber, and ask reddit to disclose such information about the posters as they possess as part of disclosure.

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.

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#33

Post by wjamesg »

wtvanhest wrote: post #15

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…

>vig·i·lan·te (noun): A member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority

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.

[1] http://imgur.com/LzEvgqX

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#34

Post by nlh »

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.

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#35

Post by [deleted] »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #29
mpyne wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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]

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#36

Post by jack-r-abbit »

steven2012 wrote: post #30

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 loo…

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.

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#37

Post by mpyne »

sirobviouspoint wrote: post #32
mpyne wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'd file a suit against the people who libelous comments, such as asserting that he factually was the bomber, and ask reddit to disclose such information about the posters as they possess as part of disclosure. 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…

> and ask reddit to disclose such information about the posters as they possess as part of disclosure.

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.

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#38

Post by mpyne »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #29
mpyne wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

It might be libel in the U.K., but the standard for such is a bit higher in the U.S. Which is probably a good thing, on the whole, as otherwise we'd have had to destroy the Internet ten years ago based on its usage as a libel-launching platform.

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#39

Post by trhtrsh »

doktrin wrote: post #26
danso wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/mo... The mod was ridiculed when Sunil's name was reportedly mentioned on sc…

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 ta…

Symmetry fallacy. Saying "Reddit was right" doesn't make Reddit wrong, it makes one more wrongsayer wrong.

Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student

#40

Post by yew »

sirobviouspoint wrote: post #32
mpyne wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'd file a suit against the people who libelous comments, such as asserting that he factually was the bomber, and ask reddit to disclose such information about the posters as they possess as part of disclosure. 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…

Funny how this stops being true as soon as it involves people you don't like. (Not accusing you personally. Just tired of "it's okay if they're politicians on the other side!")
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