Minor, Lee, Catacchio

Minor discusses how he fabricated false plot points, characters, voice actors, etc. for the mid-90’s television cartoon Street Sharks on a user-edited wiki, and how the lies eventually unknowingly spread on as seemingly factual as the internet expanded. This resulted in a confused community surrounding Street Sharks that debated about the legitimacy of a fabricated female character. Through this “social experiment” Minor displays how an easily accessible database can lead to distorted facts and how easy it is for one to unawaringly fall for a fabrication as a result.

Lee describes the Boston Bombing situation and how unqualified websites and sources led to a misguided investigation and false charges against an innocent man. Websites such as Reddit and 4Chan used a photo as basis for launching an unofficial investigation that held many racial biases, all resulting in the wrongful incrimination of a 17-year old without any legitimate evidence. This incident displays the flaws of online vigilante investigations as many participants may have biases and no proper knowledge on going about a proper investigation, especially dangerous in those involving critical situations. It is generally a more sound proposition to have websites send what they believe is incriminating evidence to the police and see what the police make of it instead of acting in their own terms.

Catacchio discusses how a barrage of various news sources from websites such as twitter can lead to misleading and conflicting information. Some of the functionalities of sites like Twitter such as “Top Tweet” could cause one side of an argument or event to be lost due to a focus on a single tweet, leading to misinformation and miscommunications. Catacchio recommends Twitter revise their methods of news spreading and crowdsourcing, perhaps through hiring experienced editorial staffs to direct people to the most factual account regarding a crisis or develop an upvote and downvote system to help depopularize false information.