-By Warner Todd Huston
Reddit has officially apologized for users’ assumption that an innocent and missing Brown University student was a likely suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
In the few days between the Monday afternoon bombing of the Boston Marathon and Friday morning when it became clear that the Tsarnev brothers were being sought by authorities for the act of terror, users of the social media website Reddit attempted to ID the bombers through a crowd sourced search of video and photographs of the bombing site.
Unfortunately, according to Reddit General Manager Erik Martin, the effort became a “witch hunt” and proved to be just the sort of situation that the website had hoped to avoid.
“We all need to look at what happened and make sure that in the future we do everything we can to help and not hinder crisis situations,” Martin said in a blog post published on April 22.
As Reddit users began pouring over the videos and images of the bombing scene from just before the bombs went off, a consensus began to emerge that a possible suspect might be a Brown University student named Sunil Tripathi, a student who has been missing since March 16.
Of course, by Friday the authorities identified Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as suspects, not the missing Tripathi.
This speculation about the missing student soon went viral, something that Martin regrets. As the Reddit chief ruefully noted, “though started with noble intentions, some of the activity on Reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties.”
“The Reddit staff and the millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened. We have apologized privately to the family of missing college student Sunil Tripathi, as have various users and moderators. We want to take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had to endure. We hope that this painful event will be channeled into something positive and the increased awareness will lead to Sunil’s quick and safe return home. We encourage everyone to join and show your support to the Tripathi family and their search.”
Martin reminded users that the website had enacted measures to prevent too much personal information from being released on the service to avoid the very sort of “witch hunts” that fingered the missing student last week. The system, however, failed in this instance.
“This crisis has reminded all of us of the fragility of people’s lives and the importance of our communities, online as well as offline,” Martin wrote.
Martin was pleased to point out, though, that many users initiated positive actions using the service. From “donating to relief funds, having pizzas delivered to area police and hospitals, to arranging for people with dogs to bring them to a park so people could escape a bit with some cute animal therapy, and even arranging housing and transportaion [sic] for out-of-towners who were stranded in Boston because of the bombing” Reddit’s users did much good during the heartrending attacks in Boston.
“We are all incredibly proud that the Reddit platform enabled this help,” Martin said.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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