Street photographer Joshua Rosenthal visited the Ventura County Fair in Ventura, California, this week and roamed the fairgrounds while shooting candid portraits of visitors. The next day, he woke up to find that he had become the target of vicious accusations on social media and a search by local vigilantes.
We reported yesterday that the FBI has issued an open call for photographs and videos that may help provide clues in the Boston Marathon bombing case. Since that time, investigators have begun circulating photos of two "possible suspects" spotted in images of the scene, suggesting that analyzing crowdsourced images has indeed been useful in this case.
It's not just government law enforcement that is attempting to use public photographs to identify the attacker, though: the large online communities Reddit and 4chan have also begun carrying out their own crowdsourced photo analysis.
A Brazilian model named Nana Gouvea is the latest person to feel the scorn of the Internet. After Hurricane Sandy plowed through New York City this past week, Gouvea decided that the wreckage presented the perfect opportunity to further her career. Going out into the devastation with her husband as a photographer, she posed for a photo shoot amidst downed trees and smashed cars. She then shared the resulting portraits through her Facebook page.
Needless to say, people didn't respond very positively to the pictures. They quickly went viral, but in a bad way.