I have mixed feelings about internet sloots.

On the one hand, they can help solve crimes and other mysteries

when law enforcement can't or won't.

But sometimes they help, and some well-known examples are the Facebook users who helped identify a man's body found in a tent in 2018.

The group grew to more than 6,000 members.

The idea is to harness the online energy that helped identify Vance Rodriguez

and to use it to identify the thousands of others who remain unidentified.

And the YouTube viewers who track down a man that posted videos of himself

killing cats after he escalated to murdering humans.

Luca Magnato was nabbed in Germany today

after a worldwide police search that reached into a hundred and ninety countries.

But even when they have good intentions, these people have the same biases as anyone else.

In that 2018 case, Sleuths harassed a cancer survivor because they thought he was guilty of something.

Turns out it had nothing to do with the case.

Another sloothing gone wrong occurred in 2013

after the Boston Marathon bombing.

An incorrect Reddit theory about who did it went viral,

which caused absolute torment for an innocent family.

And look, I'm not a psychologist, but I think that sometimes when people are out to solve a crime,

the thought of becoming a hero actually creates tunnel vision, pushes away all the other possibilities.

As New York magazine puts it,

when online sloths jump to conclusions

...