Social Media, Boston Marathon | featured news

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.

The family of Sunil Tripathi endured much emotional pain as speculation swirled that the still-missing Brown University student was a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. Users of the Reddit social news site fanned the flames — and now they, along with the site's leadership, are apologizing to Tripathi's family.

For the past 48 hours, internet users have been working with each other to piece together clues about the culprits of the Boston bombings. The result? They got it wrong - and left innocent people fearing for their safety. Many are now asking: should "crowd-sourced investigations" be stopped?

Twitter lit up Friday morning with dramatic reports from confused and terrified residents of suburban Boston, where a massive manhunt was under way for a suspect in Monday's Boston Marathon bombings.