Well it was for a while. Then they got someone killed during the whole Boston thing. So you know, theres that..

What? They didn't get anyone killed.

Sunil Tripathi committed suicide, and while missing was named as one of the Boston bombers by a bunch of Reddit detectives leading to harrassment of his family, but I don't think the suicide was a result of being misidentified.

I think that's where the GP's mistake originated, though, since there was a public misidentification of someone who committed suicide.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi

Reddit was never on the level of Twitter in terms of real-time news relevancy. Tweets are broadcast on television and used as sources for news stories constantly.

Would the world care if HN died suddenly? Almost no one would even notice.

Reddit is really little different from HN; it's just bigger.

Reddit also wasn’t just the subject of a ton of understandable attention and skepticism about how the site would continue to operate.