You don't like vigilantes, but you hope vigilantes are punishing reddit users?

Is there a recording of this? Because it sounds a lot like it never happened.

> @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)

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.

Would the pictures, or the people in the pictures, be suspected of being bombers? Were the police looking for pictures or for people in pictures?

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.

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)