Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Puts Users On Suicide Watch
Mark Wilson writes A few months ago Twitter was criticized for teaming up with suicide prevention charity Samaritans to automatically monitor for key words and phrases that could indicate that someone was struggling to cope with life. Despite the privacy concerns that surrounded Samaritans Radar, Facebook has decided that it is going to launch a similar program in a bid to prevent suicides. Working with mental health organizations including Forefront, Now Matters Now, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and Save.org, Facebook aims to provide greater help and support for anyone considering suicide or self-harm.
If they do, they're criticized for being too intrusive.
If they don't, they are criticized when someone puts a teeny bit of info out there, and the Overlord Facebook does nothing about it.
1. Facebook user vaguely considers suicide, sends post/message to (limited to, yeah, right) his friends and family suggestive of it.
2. Facebook's text scanning code detects the post, generates useless machine-generated platitudes on his timeline.
3. Facebook follows up with the actual business process they care about, selling your personal information to their customers, in this case of particular interest to potential employers and insurance companies.
4. Potentially-suicidal Facebook user, upon discovering he can no longer get a job or insurance due to being flagged as "high risk", becomes definitively suicidal. Kills self.
True, but the guy who is seeking attention this way probably needs some attention.
-Dave
That is harmful bullshit for many reasons. One being that committing suicide is not about courage or conviction!!! Honestly who talks about suicide that way other than an internet troll? Because that is how you push someone over the edge.
This is utter bullshit. Most people which seek suicide do not "do it without telling it". In fact many have along phase where you can detect symptoms (unfortunately most often hindsight) and call for help. This is not "i want to suicide" this is for example "life is so hard sometimes I want to end it all" or similar turn of phrases. And those persons use the communication way they most often use in their flife. It was letters a long time ago, sms, and whatnot, then facebook, suicide hotlines and maybe now twitter and others. The point is that it is relatively rare that somebody is 100% happy and then poof they suicide without warning (that happens, but usually it is more in the line of a illness diagnose without hope of cure or pain relief). The problem is that those warning can be very easily overlooked. That OP has no fucking clue whatsoever and should not be let near a suicide hotline ("attention seeker a bunch i tell you") or any other suicide prevention programs.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This is exactly right.
A person considering suicide usually doesn't announce to the world that they're thinking about it. They know their friends will all say the same "don't do it" lines, and some jerk will try to tell them that they just need a hug, and someone else will point out all the trivial good things they have in their life, which will just make them feel guilty for being depressed. Then there are the assholes, who are quick to point out how cruel the "real world" is, and in doing so they communicate that the person doesn't meet their high standards for living in their precious "real world", further reinforcing the depression.
Fortunately, it's hard to hide depression from a trained eye (or a trained algorithm). Writing styles change significantly with one's mood, often in consistent ways (on a per-person basis). If someone tends to write shorter posts and use stronger language when their depression worsens, it becomes a useful gauge for knowing how they're doing without asking. Interests often change as well, and especially criticisms. If a person stops caring about their adorable newborn cousin and starts obsessing about the size of their various body measurements, it may be cause for concern.
The other thing to note is that depression is a chronic condition. A quick post about how bad your day was isn't as alarming as a series of posts over the last few months saying that you just consistently feel melancholy. It can be described metaphorically as the brain being addicted to sadness, and the detection is similar. One night drinking too much doesn't qualify as an alcoholic, and a trip to Las Vegas doesn't make one a compulsive gambler. Rather, it's a long-term trend in bahavior, and again, an algorithm can easily detect that trend, where friends will likely only see the short-term changes. Friends are also likely to dismiss their concerns by rationalizing, considering it reasonable to be so upset, because of some bad thing that has happened recently.
Attention is the second best thing to help a person with depression. The best is to go beyond mere attention, and offer support. Detach the worthwhile person from their degrading affliction, and show that you care for them. Treat the depression as one would a broken leg or a bad cough. It gets in the way, but it's not the defining quality of the person. That distinction, once accepted, is the first step to recovery. Just like with an addiction, there are good days and there are bad days, but the slow progress eventually bears fruit.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I had the very bad luck of dealing with a loved one with 3 suicide attempts provoked by psychosis. The problems followed heavy depression which in turn was provoked by...unemployment.
Once the person recovered, she went on restoring her brain faculties and although some portions of [very few] faculties could not be restored to previous levels. Nevertheless the doctors showed us that she has "dropped" from "extremely smart" to "very smart". Some faculties were better than before because she developed them further with brain games and what's not.
Now guess what happened? 4 years after the recovery there is no job [she is a PhD in physics with good articles and 2 successful post-doc projects]. There is not going to be a job, because noone takes "the risk" of hiring someone with few years interrupted career. It is a vicious cycle....
Meanwhile, the medical system bankrupted me and made me very sick [I've described it in detail for another thread] so we have no money, no job for her [and mine, although being very advance and interesting does not pay that well], debts and destroyed faculties by the medical system of both of us.
We need only one type of help, only one pill. Dignity!!! Which comes from sense of self-respect which comes from being economically sound, i.e. at least have a job [forget the whole discussion about the socioeconomic system, the times are like they are, we need jobs, the star trek future is postponed indefinitely due to greed].
That is what we need -- one "brave" company that wants to benefit tremendously by hiring [likely for less money than usual] someone who is so eager to contribute and restore their place in society....the social system even offers to pay her salary for a few months so that the company gets to evaluate her for free...and still nothing. Unemployment is rising everywhere in Europe, the "crisis" from 2009 will never end, the middle class is shrinking....expect rise in suicide in the whole western world...
So fuck those initiatives. No Facebook, nor anyone else can do squat about it. In fact Facebook, being greedy corporation which fucks its customers left right and centre, is part of the problem...
...and the next phase is scanning for murderers, and if that proves efficient (or not) the next step will be predictive scanning for crimes in general.. See where it's going? Now - is it a bad thing if such algorithms would have high success ratio?
when I became a man, I put away childish things.
You're not a geek then.