s*** just got real - not sure if you remember but a guy called Sunil Tripathi was called out by Reddit super sleuths AKA f***wit lynch squad as the initial Boston bomber.. well he turned up dead.. but its ok.. reddit apologised

Reddit apologized for the 'dangerous speculation' on the site that pointed fingers at the student. A body pulled from the water off Indian Point Park in Rhode Island has been identified as the Brown University student mistakenly linked by amateur sleuths on a social media site to the Boston bombings.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/04/25/boston-bombing-social-media-student-brown-university-reddit/2112309/

Be funny if a vigilante group saw his picture posted so they decided to dispatch their own justice only to find a few days later the FBI release pictures of the real suspects.

typical american f****, bet they feel awesome now, especially those who killed him..

It was not immediately clear when Tripathi, who was last seen March 15, died. The cause of death has also not been determined.

I like how we all learned from this immediately not to jump to conclusions, no matter how likely something seemed ... and then concluded that it was everyone on Reddit's fault and he was killed by people taking the law into their own hands.

Yeah, given the date he's been missing and the fact they needed dental records makes me think this was probably just a coinky-dink.

Either that, or the government did it.

So was he named on reddit/4chan because he was suspiciously "missing" in the days/weeks prior to the bombing? (i.e. up to no good)Given the way you try to link loosely related events for maximum outrage, are you a newsdotcomdotau editor?

Nope he's just a regular guy! It's amazing that you can barely tell the difference, i'm staring between his writing and news.com.au and wondering why he isn't being paid millions.

Truthfully though, because he's not an editor there's zero reason he can't ask a hyperbolic question phrased as a statement. Is there a link? Does it matter? If he was in the water for that many weeks i think he'd be pretty hard to recognize but my google skills suggest that it takes 3-5 weeks for a body to really decompose beyond recognition in 20c water, not just a few days.

Of course there's a billion other things that cause it to go fast and slow, like temp/salt/bacteria in the water/sun/shade/etc.

So more speculation!

I think it's pretty surprising that they apologised since it gives the impression that they have a measure of control over the situation. Facebook and Twitter have never apologised for anything that has been done through their sites and because of that people know to lay the blame on the users rather than the host.

Pretty sure it was a subreddit mod (ie a system user) who apologised, not reddit admins / owners.

Why does reddit give off this overwhelming sense of smug satisfaction? Everyone seems to be involved in this big circle jerk or something?

Because reddit really is a giant circle jerk

24 hours in water and you become unrecognisable

Because reddit really is a giant circle jerk

It's true. They love their witch hunts too.