Crowdsourcing Failed In Boston Bombing Aftermath 270
Nerval's Lobster writes "With emotions high in the hours and days following the Boston Marathon bombing, hundreds of people took to Reddit's user-generated forums to pick over images from the crime scene. Could a crowd of sharp-eyed citizens uncover evidence of the perpetrators? No, but they could definitely focus attention on the wrong people. '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,' read an April 22 posting on Reddit's official blog. 'The reddit staff and the millions of people on reddit around the world deeply regret that this happened.'"
Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps this is why a defined legal system is more valuable than the historically-standard mob rule.
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:5, Insightful)
The Zero Accountability Rumor Mill (Score:5, Insightful)
But wait! We can do better than that! Let's go look at
Also hilarious is that they are saying the bombers have been found. Wrong. Whatever they did, they are still innocent until proven guilty! I am quite upset with everyone dropping the "alleged" word and referring to them as "the bombers" instead of "the suspects." They will get their day in court, that's how this stuff works. That's what lead to all the bad stuff that happened in
We live in an era of digital lynch mobs.
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the live threads on reddit were pretty damn fast and accurate.
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:4, Insightful)
Respecting peoples privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is something that are country tends to fail miserably at and unfortunately you can't blame it all on corporations. The media very much deserves a large part of the blame for this with an attitude that everyone's private business is public business. It's not just this issue, Gawker took their anti-gun crusade and published peoples personal addresses after they followed New York law and registered their guns.
Example after example of the media blatantly disregarding people's privacy can be cited with entirely too much ease. As a society we should be ashamed of events like this and look to Europe for guidance on respecting other peoples privacy. Perhaps someday the right for privacy should be the next great civil rights crusade?
Re:crowsourcing did NOT fail - here's why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Wisdom of crowds is about the same as the wisdom of committees.In fact, America is a Representative Democracy precisely in order to (intended to at least) avoid mob justice--aka direct democracy.
In other words... *this* is why we can't have nice things! I have nothing against reddit really, but it always felt too much like a groupthink factory for my taste (and that is saying something considering i still put up with slashdot). Anyway, more information is not the same thing as better information!
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a point that needs, um, pointed out more.
The observational news on places like reddit was great. Pictures of the events unfolding. Areas where the gunfights occurred were mapped quickly. Blew the news agencies out of the water. There are more regular people seeing things happen then there are news reporters seeing things happen.
The investigational information was pretty crap. Lots of names and pictures of people being tossed out that had nothing to do with it. That said, a lot of it is similar to how the police do investigations, the 'internet' just had less information. We didn't get to see things like CCTV footage and such.
Other then telling people, don't take for granted what you read on the internet, not much can be done about the issue though. Some sites can censor information posted, but the rate information is posted will be faster than it can be redacted. Once a few people read it, they will spread that information too. That doesn't even take in to effect sites that will not censor any information. The fact is, with the camera filled world we live in these days, people are going to do their own investigation right or wrong.
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:3, Insightful)
Wisdom of crowds is about the same as the wisdom of committees.In fact, America is a Representative Democracy precisely in order to (intended to at least) avoid mob justice--aka direct democracy.
Minor contention: America (as in, the USA) is a Constitutional Republic, (allegedly) with Democratically elected Representation.
You get the same mob rule issues with any pure Democracy; the difference between Direct and Representative is merely which mob is making the rules.
Re:Early Crimefighting Crowdsourcing in Salem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:5, Insightful)
"Crowd Sourcing" - "None of us, is as dumb as all of us"
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the saying goes - the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The fact you bring up witch hunts illustrates it brilliantly - all that's happened is we've moved the angry mob with pitchforks online and globally. But we're still basically the same after what, 300 years?
The only really good thing is it was solved before the lynching and trials began in earnest. Otherwise what's really happened is Salem all over again.
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:5, Insightful)
The investigational information was pretty crap. Lots of names and pictures of people being tossed out that had nothing to do with it. That said, a lot of it is similar to how the police do investigations, the 'internet' just had less information. We didn't get to see things like CCTV footage and such.
The other big difference is that police investigations aren't broadcasting every phase of the investigation to the entire world. For an hour or two, they might suspect that student from a politically-inconvenient country, but the public (and the politicians of that politically-inconvenient country) will never know. On 4chan, every suspicion is public, ready to be picked up by the echo chamber and presented as fact to the whole world.
not really crowdsourcing (Score:4, Insightful)
Crowdsourcing did not fail because what occurred was not crowdsourcing.
There is a distinction between, on the one hand, the emergent behavior which spontaneously arises from ungoverned social interaction and, on the other hand, the management practice of dividing and framing a problem such that it can be solved by large, loosely-affiliated groups of anonymous individuals working in parallel. The latter is crowdsourcing. The former, in the case of attempts to identify Boston Marathon suspects in online fora such as reddit, is a vigilante mob.
At least that interpretation is consistent with the conventional usage of the term "crowdsourcing" up to this point. Consider well-known examples such as the Mechanical Turk [wikipedia.org], the search for the wreckage of Steve Fosset's plane [wikipedia.org] and prediction markets such as Iowa Electonic Markets [uiowa.edu]. In all case the role of any individual in the crowd is predefined and constrained in advance by design. Constraints can include the dimension of response and the information to be evaluated.
Re:Early Crimefighting Crowdsourcing in Salem (Score:5, Insightful)
Either try them or release them. Those are your two civilized options.
Re:Some other relevant stories (Score:4, Insightful)
Online communities are invariably self-sorting, which is a tried and true recipe for groupthink and confirmation bias. In principle, an online community can support a broad, diverse range of views and skillsets. In practice, whatever shared worldview is most dominant among a community's members will, in time, come to define that community and drive out anyone not sufficiently adherent (other than trolls, who can be removed by fiat.)