Reddit Bans Subreddit Trying to Find Navy Yard Shooters

[roseofbattle]

Reddit Bans Subreddit Trying to Find Navy Yard Shooters

A group of online amateur sleuths spreading others' personal information is the last thing authorities want.

Yesterday morning a contractor who had been discharged from the Navy in 2011 opened fire at Washington Navy Yard. While authorities began searching for the shooter, a subreddit called "findnavyyardshooters" [http://www.reddit.com/r/findnavyyardshooters/ ] became the gathering place for community members to post personal information of suspected shooters. The subreddit was then banned for violating site rules "by encouraging the posting of personal information." The sidebar for the subreddit urged members to only post leads and personal information if "you are really sure." Reddit general manager Erik Martin told the Washington Post, "We do not allow the posting of personal information under any circumstances."

Back in April, Reddit users teamed up to find the identity of the attackers in the Boston Marathon bombing, fueling "online witch hunts" that falsely identified people as the bomber. One false identification claimed Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown student, was one of the bombers. Tripathi was later found dead in Rhode Island. Martin apologized in April [http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/22/business/la-fi-tn-reddit-apologizes-boston-bombings-witch-hunt-20130422] for not stopping the posts. "We hoped that the crowdsourced search for new information would not spark exactly this type of witch hunt. We were wrong. The search for the bombers bore less resemblance to the types of vindictive Internet witch hunts our no-personal-information rule was originally written for, but the outcome was no different."

Social media can cause dangerous consequences when people are not aware of their actions or posts. It's a good thing Reddit moderators have learned from their mistake in April.

Source: Washington Post [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/16/reddit-bans-subreddit-for-finding-the-navy-yard-shooters/]

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[Baresark]

Good, shut those stupid fucks down. They will universally cause more harm than good. I can't help but feel that the people responsible for that Brown students death should have been held partially responsible for his death.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Wonderful, leave the detective work to the actual detectives. We don't need the anonymous fuckwits on the internet spray-and-praying their speculation guns in cases which can ruin people's lives.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

For the first time in my life, Reddit has given me hope.

 

[Falterfire]

The article is misleading: The Brown student who died was dead by the time the bombings and subsequent witch hunt happened. Reddit had nothing to do with the death of that guy.

 

[Chessrook44]

Another one of those things where the concept is good, but execution is crappy simply due to human nature.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Good...allowing that sort of thing is flat out a terrible idea.

 

[Covarr]

After the internet attempted to investigate the Boston Marathon bombings with a bunch of meaningless ?evidence? and failed to turn up anything of value at all, I'm glad to see future e-detectivery stifled.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Lilani]

I think this is a good thing. Being able to freely distribute information about an ongoing criminal investigation with absolutely no consequences or accountability for the information which is offered up can never lead to good things. Should communities band together and help with problems facing them? Yes, but the Internet is not bound to a single community and nor does it provide the accountability that actually talking with people face to face does. I see lots of "amber alert" and "missing persons" things on Facebook, but I'm really dubious about all of them. Perhaps if I got the information straight from an app dedicated to such things and straight from the authorities themselves with live updates, but I really just can't take anything shared down the grapevine of Facebook seriously. Again, there's no accountability, and a lot of times it's impossible to tell if it's real without actually calling up the police department and asking if the person is really missing.

 

[King Kazma]

Yes we don't want another Reddit Boston Bombing detective debacle. Thats was rather embarrassing and I was quite pleased when the decision was brought down. We'll leave the detective work to the real guys.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Why were they even looking for a shooter, didn't the police find and kill him in the Navy Yard? Anyway, these things rarely help. It's worse than 'psychic' detectives showing up to offer their 'abilities'. People might mean well but if they think they have a genuine lead they should just contact the authorities and let them handle it, not go to the internet to team up with eScooby and xXshaggysephiroth92Xx to solve the mystery.

 

[JoJo]

Good, shut those stupid fucks down. They will universally cause more harm than good. I can't help but feel that the people responsible for that Brown students death should have been held partially responsible for his death.

The student was missing for a month before the bombings even happened, so it's most likely his apparent suicide was unrelated to the accusations. Otherwise I agree though, if history has told us anything it's that you shouldn't rely on a mob for accuracy.

 

[KDR_11k]

Neonazis often run witch hunts like this for paedophiles. It's a good demonstration of why vigilante justice is illegal.

 

[VanQ]

For the first time in my life, Reddit has given me hope.

I'm sorry, what exactly was it about this;

Back in April, Reddit users teamed up to find the identity of the attackers in the Boston Marathon bombing, fueling "online witch hunts" that falsely identified people as the bomber. One false identification claimed Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown student, was one of the bombers. Tripathi was later found dead in Rhode Island.

That gives you hope? No, seriously? This man was likely killed because he was falsely accused by the idiots on Reddit for being a bomber. I really hope you just didn't read the whole article before you posted that.

Seriously though, who the hell even thought Reddit could do something like this? Leave that stuff to 4chan, they have the collective anonymous hordes of the internet to help them sleuth out scumbags when they search. Reddit just has a bunch of egotistical attention seekers posting for the hopes of showing up on the front page.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

For the first time in my life, Reddit has given me hope.

I'm sorry, what exactly was it about this;

Back in April, Reddit users teamed up to find the identity of the attackers in the Boston Marathon bombing, fueling "online witch hunts" that falsely identified people as the bomber. One false identification claimed Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown student, was one of the bombers. Tripathi was later found dead in Rhode Island.

That gives you hope? No, seriously? This man was likely killed because he was falsely accused by the idiots on Reddit for being a bomber. I really hope you just didn't read the whole article before you posted that.

Seriously though, who the hell even thought Reddit could do something like this? Leave that stuff to 4chan, they have the collective anonymous hordes of the internet to help them sleuth out scumbags when they search. Reddit just has a bunch of egotistical attention seekers posting for the hopes of showing up on the front page.

Did you read the article? Reddit closed the subReddit before it could do a repeat of the bombing witch hunt using the shooting. That is what gave me hope.

 

[major_chaos]

I'm sorry, what exactly was it about this;

Back in April, Reddit users teamed up to find the identity of the attackers in the Boston Marathon bombing, fueling "online witch hunts" that falsely identified people as the bomber. One false identification claimed Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown student, was one of the bombers. Tripathi was later found dead in Rhode Island.

That gives you hope? No, seriously? This man was likely killed because he was falsely accused by the idiots on Reddit for being a bomber. I really hope you just didn't read the whole article before you posted that.

This article is misleading. The Brown student was dead before the bombings even happened. It wasn't Reddit's fault he died, its just shows that they were incompetent enough to suspect a dead man.