[jayrobin]

while I was quite shocked by the witch-hunt and amount of 'suspicious until proven innocent' I saw in that subreddit, in fairness to reddit as a whole that is one small subreddit among thousands.

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.

[maxerickson]

Some small subreddit goes off the rails every few months.

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)