As police scoured New England this week for the gunman who killed two people at Brown University, a parallel manhunt erupted online, falsely targeting a Palestinian student.

• Authorities say the real suspect, a Portuguese national also linked to the slaying of an MIT professor, was found dead Thursday in New Hampshire.

Why it matters: Social media influencers who play detective after tragedies are getting it disastrously wrong — falsely accusing innocent people of crimes with little evidence, massive reach and virtually no accountability.

• The speculation often is stoked by ideological accounts that seize on "clues" reinforcing their worldviews. Corrections are exceedingly rare — and seldom travel as far as the original claims.

Zoom in: Mustapha Kharbouch was never named by police as a suspect in the shooting that killed two Brown students, including the vice president of the college Republican Club.

• But he was targeted online after his student profile disappeared from the university's website — a move MAGA-aligned accounts seized on as supposed evidence of a cover-up.
• Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said Tuesday there were many reasons the pages could have been taken down — including to prevent doxxing — and warned that online vigilantes were heading down a "really dangerous road."

But the frenzy only accelerated from there.

• Popular right-wing figures and large anonymous accounts cast Kharbouch's identity — Palestinian, openly queer and outspoken on Gaza —...

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