I thought 'Racist Where's Waldo' is a very good 3 word summary
Except they didn't say that. What the hell is "Where's Wally"? Are they trying to avoid trademark infringement or something?
Outside the US it's Wally, not Waldo.
Reddit, Boston and the missing student
51–60 of 71 posts
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Is releasing photos of someone and accusing them of murder really not considered libel in the US? It seems like quite an extreme case of libel to me (although IANAL).
Freedom of speech is kind of a big thing around here, yes.
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).
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#53I 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...
> Sadly, Reddit can't offer up a collective apology.
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.
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Is releasing photos of someone and accusing them of murder really not considered libel in the US? It seems like quite an extreme case of libel to me (although IANAL).
> Is releasing photos of someone and accusing them of murder really not considered libel in the US?
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.
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#55I thought 'Racist Where's Waldo' is a very good 3 word summary
Except they didn't say that. What the hell is "Where's Wally"? Are they trying to avoid trademark infringement or something?
Where's Wally? is a famous British series of picture books that are used to play a game of spotting a certain character named Wally. They are published in many countries around the world and in two of them, the US and Canada, I think, Wally was renamed Waldo.
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#56Sunil 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'm not surprised at all.
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.
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#57I don't think I've seen anything as douchey as embedding your own tweets in an article.
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Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#58To 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. Th…
While I don't doubt that there might be some people who could've gone either way on crowdsourced vigilantism but are now vocally against it now that it has failed, people were speaking out about how colossally bad of an idea it was from the start[1], for exactly the reasons it ultimately failed.
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...
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I thought I was pretty explicit in stating that this had to do with specific individuals?
Re: Reddit, Boston and the missing student
#60To 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. Th…
While I don't doubt that there might be some people who could've gone either way on crowdsourced vigilantism but are now vocally against it now that it has failed, people were speaking out about how colossally bad of an idea it was from the start[1], for exactly the reasons it ultimately failed. 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…
To piggyback on [1], most of the commentary I saw here on HN was quite guarded & skeptical to the internet sleuthing. To paint this as a "20/20 hindsight only" situation is misleading.