16.3. Ad-hoc Crowdsourcing Examples

Crowdsourcing isn’t always pre-planned or designed for. Sometimes a crowd stumbles into crowd tasks in an unplanned, ad hoc manner. Like identifying someone and sharing the news in this scene from the movie Crazy Rich Asians:

16.3.1. “Solving” a “Problem”

When social media users work together, we can consider what problem they are solving. For example, for some of the Tiktok Duet videos from the virality chapter, the “problem” would be something like “how do we create music out of this source video” and the different musicians contribute their own piece to the solution. For some other examples:

• In the case of a missing hiker rescued after Twitter user tracks him down using his last-sent photo, the “problem” was “Where did the hiker disappear?” and the crowd investigated whatever they could to find the solution of the hiker’s location.

• In the case of Canucks’ staffer uses social media to find fan who saved his life, the “problem” was “Who is the fan who saved the Canucks’ staffer’s life?” and the solution was basically to try to identify and dox the fan (though hopefully in a positive way).

• In the case of Twitter tracks down mystery couple in viral proposal photos, the problem was “Who is the couple in the photo?” and the solution was again to basically dox them, though in the article they seemed ok with it.

16.3.2. Well-Intentioned Harm

Sometimes even well-intentioned efforts can do significant harm.

For example, in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, FBI released a security photo of one of the bombers and asked for tips. A group of Reddit users decided to try to identify the bomber(s) themselves. They quickly settled on a missing man (Sunil Tripathi) as the culprit (it turned out had died by suicide and was in no way related to the case), and flooded the Facebook page set up to search for Sunil Tripathi, causing his family unnecessary pain and difficulty. The person who set up the “Find Boston Bomber” Reddit board said “It Was a Disaster” but “Incredible”, and Reddit apologized for online Boston ‘witch hunt’.

16.3.3. Social and political movements

Some ad hoc crowdsourcing can be part of a social or political movement. For example, Social media organizing played a role in the Arab Spring revolutions in the 2010s, and Social Media platforms were a large part of the #MeToo movement, where victims of sexual abuse/harassment spoke up and stood together.

16.3.4. Crowd harassment

Social media crowdsoucing can also be used for harassment, which we’ll look at more in the next couple chapters. But for some examples: the case of Justine Sacco involved crowdsourcing to identify and track her flight, and even get a photo of her turning on her phone.

16.3.5. Spreading rumors and disinformation

Crowds on social media can also share rumors, and can be an essential (if unreliable) way of spreading information during a crises.

Disinformation campaigns also make use of crowdsoucing. An academic research paper Disinformation as Collaborative Work (pdf) lays out a range of disinformation campaigns:

• Orchestrated: Entirely fake and astroturfed, no genuine users contributing.

• Cultivated: Intentionally created misinformation that is planted in a community. It is then spread by real users not aware they are part of a disinformation campaign.

• Emergent and self-sustaining: Communities creating and spreading their own rumors or own conspiracy narratives.