In a small community it is fun to sleuth around and see what pops up and what information you can get from essentially nothing. Someone says "that looks like a place where I used to visit in Chicago" and another scours google maps to find the exact location. You ponder whether or not it could be real, fantasize about what if it actually was, wonder about the person behind the murder, the situation, the decision to post it online, and that's it. You realize that it is a fun little detective roleplay but you really don't have the power to discover or implement or incriminate anyone.

The problem is reddit is so big and the information isn't between a small group of people. It isn't private either. And the consequences of a private forum or email exchange can't be stumbled upon by the masses to share and incriminate and even implement punishment - whether physical harmful punishment or emotional/reputation punishment.

The second the detective role-playing switches from private fantasies to public sharing, it changes completely. Then someone can come along and post a link to the facebook of a kid they went to highschool with that has the same glasses and brown hair next to a well-researched, or evidence based article. And the next person can come along, skim the thread, and assume that this facebook, with no evidence to back it up whatsoever, is true simply because it is associated with something that is true. And then lives get ruined.