I hope this is a retaliation for the abhorrent behaviour of reddit users in blind smearing of innocent individuals in an attempt to prove the worth of social media/the internet/their "community". Information is dangerous when it is placed in the hands of these clowns and reddit needs to address their problems quickly before they ruin more lives.
Although it should be noted that the Latin itself is a translation, since this quote is attributed to Socrates and would have originally been in Greek.
According to Wikipedia it's (incorrectly) attributed to the Socrates character in Plato's Republic. Although a related idea is discussed in that book, the saying itself is attributed to Roman poet Juvenal, which was discussing marital affairs.
Actually posts containing speculations about Sunil (missing student) were instantaneously deleted (as groundless and potentially harmful) , at least before name appeared on police scanner, at least on r/findbostonbombers. Info was spread somewhere else, because new people constantly were creating ones.
No, this happened. A purported classmate of Sunil's had tweeted about the resemblance to Suspect #2 about 14 hours ago:
> @christiiinaaaxo @jaredleesmith @thejman218 Looks just like a kid from my area that went missing exactly a month and has yet to be found.
> I mean maybe it's a total coincidence but I'm more than a little freaked out by the resemblance. #Boston pic.twitter.com/Qsd6rj5v5l
At some point, the Internet ran with her speculation:
> It makes me sad that people are going to the Tripathi family Facebook page and writing nasty things. That was never my intention
And at around 4-5 am, the Boston police scanners said they were looking for Sunil. I remember this because I fell asleep at 5am thinking that this bizarre story involved Sunil and then woke up at 8 learning that two completely different suspects had been identified. From the twitterer:
> So if what I'm hearing is correct, at 3 AM when the police scanners said they had their suspect and it was Sunil, I was wrong.
The tweeter's account is now protected but she hasn't deleted her tweets. I think everyone, including her, has learned a little about making well-intentioned speculation on the Internet. But apparently, even the Boston police had been fooled (at least someone in the BPD was, which is why police scanners should not be taken as gospel)
the Boston police scanners said they were looking for Sunil
Did you hear this yourself, or did you read it? That's really what I'm asking. I know many people were listening, but it's hard to tell what people heard first-hand and what people simply re-tweeted.
For my own peace of mind I'm trying to distinguish between two possibilities: a) that the names were not heard on the scanner at all and whole story was either a mirage or an intentional hoax, b) that someone's erroneous tip to the police was mistaken for its own confirmation.
This is an excellent point. No I did not hear it myself and would not have been able to tell what was a first-hand account of hearing it from merely retweets/reposts of that information. And whoever originally heard it may have heard chatter that said the names, but not in the context of being actual suspects.
It didn't the student's name was mentioned by a friend of his on Twitter who after looking at the photos released by police said that they thought there was a resemblance between the suspect in the white hat and her friend who had been missing for a month after dropping out of school and becoming depressed. There were several articles about the individual already on the web predating the bombing because the FBI had been contacted by the guy's family to help find him. The name mentioned on Police scanners was a different person also incorrect.
Can you show me some examples of abhorrent behavior? In the few reddit threads I skimmed about the bombing everyone was surprisingly mature, especially when pointing out 'suspicious' people.
Not in my opinion. They were just people trying to catch the bombers. No one was jumping to conclusions from what I saw (maybe some did but they were downvoted further down than I scrolled), rather they were just pointing out scenes that looked suspicious to them so that the police could investigate further. While there have definitely been cases in the past where a line has been crossed, I don't believe that to have happened this time.
while I was quite shocked by the witch-hunt and amount of 'suspicious until proven innocent' I saw in that subreddit, in fairness to reddit as a whole that is one small subreddit among thousands.
Also, some of the highest upvoted threads and comments appear to be warning others of the potential negative consequences of their publicly pointing out everyone with a backpack or different coloured skin.
Some small subreddit goes off the rails every few months.
Reddit as a whole needs a better answer for that than just pointing out that it is just some small subreddit.
(I don't pretend to know what that answer is, and I guess it does have more to do with people choosing how to participate in online discussions than it does reddit, but reddit is well positioned to push that participation in a better direction)
Last time I checked, the find Boston bombers subreddit had ~5K subscribers. r/humor currently has ~3.6 million. Please check your facts before making any more claims...
Reddit used to be worthwhile and interesting until it became Digg v2. It's now just flooded with worthless content like rage comics to appeal to the lowest common denominator of internet "culture".
I wouldn't take their critique too seriously although I did get a chuckle out of a redditor blocking Hacker News for being too predictable.
Actually my hostfile at work is for blocking things that are a waste of time. I pop reddit out and read proggit while I drink my morning coffee. I don't see where you got the idea I block HN because its predictable, that wouldn't make any sense.
It should be predictable to him. It's his kind that has degraded the quality of HN posts by turning it into reddit. Soon enough we'll be saying HN used to be worthwhile and interesting until it turned into reddit v2.
