Reddit shows why its potential is more ‘worst’ than ‘best.’
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: In a country where suing for grievances is almost a nonchalant way of life, and a way to seek instant justice for breach of rights and violations, it remains to be seen if the family of missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, will try to take the website Reddit to court for adding insult and humiliation to the mental agony they are going through since Tripathi went missing suddenly mid-March.
The social news website Reddit started the modern version of a witch hunt, when after the Boston bombings, they started a thread where people – read disillusioned folks who don’t have a job or inclination to work or simply have lost touch with reality – started to post their fantastic theories of who were involved in the blasts based on people who matched the profile of the photos posted by FBI of the two suspects.
Many of these posts pointed out similarities between the missing Tripathi, 22, and the Suspect #2, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who is now in custody, and decided like the lynch mobs of old that they had their culprit.
The ordeal for the Tripathi family became so intense with journalists crowding their backyard, including 12 news vans trying to outdo each other in getting some bit of new information, and the deluge of phone calls that came their way, that they had to suspend a Facebook page they had created to find Sunil. His sister, Sangeeta Tripathi, expressed her disgust in an interview to NBC, saying Reddit was “one of the more ugly and disgusting places that had a lot of traffic” relating to Sunil.
There were mistakes by the traditional media outlets too, including stalwarts like CNN – whose anchor John King, based on leads he received, reported that the suspect had been caught, when in fact he was not, and the tabloid New York Post, wrongly, and stupidly reported two Moroccan men were the two suspects wanted in connection with the blasts.
After all the brouhaha has died down, and the San Francisco-based Reddit decided they had milked enough idiots to visit their website to post meaningless witch hunt threads, comes a grand apology from Reddit General Manager Erik Martin, who tried to give a balanced viewpoint – admitting at the same time the scum of the earth the Internet website really is – by saying the witch hunt against Tripathi “showed the best and worst of Reddit’s potential.”
Saying many Reddit users had privately apologized to the Tripathi family – surely to save themselves the ignominy of being sued as well if it comes to that – the contrite Martin said he wanted to “take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had to endure.”
The post added: “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. 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.”
Interestingly, a few years ago, Reddit had put in place a policy to not allow personal information on the site, something they totally disregarded when it came to the witch hunt against Tripathi and his family, who fear the worst for the missing student.
It would be great if some rational Reddit users start a thread now on that website as to who all want to sue Reddit for the witch hunt against Sunil Tripathi. That would be nice, and Reddit need not apologize too later.
As for the Tripathi family, all they really want for now would be to see Sunil alive and well.
To contact the editor, e-mail: sujeetrajan@americanbazaaronline.com