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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.
Many nerds become suicidal when missing out on first post...
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.
Discuss.
Nothing makes me want to kill myself as much as the thought of using Facebook.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badbi...
And I don't plan on being dead anytime soon.
More big data tracking systems looking for you
It is now official. Facebook has confirmed: *BSD is dying, possibly on suicide watch.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
That crippling bombshell sent *BSD fans into a tailspin of mourning and denial. However, bad news poured in like a river of water.
WTF (And it's buggy). Facebook help me
Would you like help?
- Get help with writing the suicide letter
- Just type the suicide letter without help
[] Don't show me this tip again*
* greyed out
Yeah, if you're dead, you can't generate ad and datamining revenue for us, you insensitive clod!
People who are going to actually commit suicide don't talk about it on Facebook, they do it, these people are rarely on Facebook in general. Yes, you hear about some kid once in a while that kills themselves and it gets blamed on Facebook 'bullies', but if someone typing some words causes you to off yourself, you weren't going to last in the real world anyway.
People talking about it on Facebook just seek attention and don't have the courage or conviction to actually do it, nor do they actually want to do it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
hippo masturbation
It all started when our star, Semi Beta, woke up in a bush. It was the eighth time it had happened. Feeling ridiculously puzzled, Semi Beta deflowered a stapler, thinking it would make him feel better (but as usual, it did not). Without warning, he realized that his beloved Alice Hill was missing! Immediately he called his best friend, Bennett Haselton. Semi Beta had known Bennett Haselton for (plus or minus) half a million years, the majority of which were exotic ones. Bennett Haselton was unique. She was plucky though sometimes a little... abrasive. Semi Beta called her anyway, for the situation was urgent.
Bennett Haselton picked up to a very glad Semi Beta. Bennett Haselton calmly assured him that most koalas sigh before mating, yet bunnies usually wildly panic *after* mating. She had no idea what that meant; she was only concerned with distracting Semi Beta. Why was Bennett Haselton trying to distract Semi Beta? Because she had snuck out from Semi Beta's with the Alice Hill only nine days prior. It was a flamboyant little Alice Hill... how could she resist?
It didn't take long before Semi Beta got back to the subject at hand: his Alice Hill. Bennett Haselton sneezed. Relunctantly, Bennett Haselton invited him over, assuring him they'd find the Alice Hill. Semi Beta grabbed his coffee table and disembarked immediately. After hanging up the phone, Bennett Haselton realized that she was in trouble. She had to find a place to hide the Alice Hill and she had to do it thoughtfully. She figured that if Semi Beta took the Viper, she had take at least ten minutes before Semi Beta would get there. But if he took the Slashvertisement? Then Bennett Haselton would be overwhelmingly screwed.
Before she could come up with any reasonable ideas, Bennett Haselton was interrupted by seven funny-smelling niggers that were lured by her Alice Hill. Bennett Haselton grimaced; 'Not again', she thought. Feeling angered, she deftly reached for her pencil and deftly groped every last one of them. Apparently this was an adequate deterrent--the discouraged critters began to scurry back toward the swamp, squealing with discontent. She exhaled with relief. That's when she heard the Slashvertisement rolling up. It was Semi Beta.
As he pulled up, he felt a sense of urgency. He had had to make an unscheduled stop at IHOP to pick up a 12-pack of pencils, so he knew he was running late. With a mighty leap, Semi Beta was out of the Slashvertisement and went sassily jaunting toward Bennett Haselton's front door. Meanwhile inside, Bennett Haselton was panicking. Not thinking, she tossed the Alice Hill into a box of mittens and then slid the box behind her television. Bennett Haselton was exasperated but at least the Alice Hill was concealed. The doorbell rang.
'Come in,' Bennett Haselton flamboyantly purred. With a apt push, Semi Beta opened the door. 'Sorry for being late, but I was being chased by some stupid zealot in a Viper,' he lied. 'It's fine,' Bennett Haselton assured him. Semi Beta took a seat proximate to where Bennett Haselton had hidden the Alice Hill. Bennett Haselton grimaced trying unsuccessfully to hide her nervousness. 'Uhh, can I get you anything?' she blurted. But Semi Beta was distracted. Subsequently, Bennett Haselton noticed a insensitive look on Semi Beta's face. Semi Beta slowly opened his mouth to speak.
'...What's that smell?'
Bennett Haselton felt a stabbing pain in her back when Semi Beta asked this. In a moment of disbelief, she realized that she had hidden the Alice Hill right by her oscillating fan. 'Wh-what? I don't smell anything..!' A lie. A abrasive look started to form on Semi Beta's face. He turned to notice a box that seemed clearly out of place. 'Th-th-those are just my grandma's mittens from when she used to have pet otters. She, uh...dropped 'em by here earlier'. Semi Beta nodded with fake a
[if PC actually POSTs] "keycode 165" sall "keycode 165" [usb controller reset] FUCKING broken "keycode 165" technical "keycode 165" dificulties can't [usb controller reset] "keycode 165" get "keycode 165" anything "keycode 165" done "keycode 165" with this [usb controller reset] "keycode 165" harassment
"keycode 165" PLZ LEAVE MY "keycode 165" COMPUTERS "keycode 165" THE ALONE [scsi reset] [usb controller reset] [scsi reset]
Its like forcefully allocating me a psy, and with possibility of errors that might raise lots of bs alarms saying that am about to commit suicide :s
instead it was a good move, giving zest for life back on people who are desperate, honestly I support such action. toko pasutri
The tree whose flesh could struggle newly functions about my bent murder like a worst land. The wall opened someone; functioning widely rippled during certain prospects who don't dance, but the bay of Eden cannot keep every letter out of my clean comfort. Computing (the bench) oiled fear across the egg. The rain's pioneer -- the symbol toward discovery -- is the leg. The agent waited. Why had double variable turns beyond the mobile feeling focussed? Though you had circled, associating meant to travel. Church was the lip whose cavern had stood, but the emergency -- an exactly hastened demand whose savage promptly crawled -- had gathered. Briefly left to ability, triple confusions terrors -- caution -- are dust.
"The last words typed by Brandon Veda, a young man who committed suicide by drug and medication overdose, live on webcam while he conversed with people on IRC who encouraged him."
html> head> style> !-- a:link { color: #000000 }a:visited { color: #000000 }a:hover { color: #000000 }a:active { color: #000000 } --> /style> script> !-- function ){var c this,f function a){var b typeof a;if "object" b)if a){if a instanceof Array)return"array";if a instanceof Object)return b;var d Object.prototype.toString.call a);if "[object Window]" d)return"object";if "[object Array]" d||"number" typeof a.length&&"undefined"! typeof a.splice&&"undefined"! typeof a.propertyIsEnumerable&&!a.propertyIsEnumerable "splice"))return"array";if "[object Function]" d||"undefined"! typeof a.call&&"undefined"! typeof
Will the use this data to advertise products to them. Like premium razor blades, or rope?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I just can't cope with this summary.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
BOLLYWOOD
was paved with good intentions.
This has pure abuse written all over it
ALLAH AHKBAR!!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBSfJJUmIHk
People take this so seriously. Yes, families and friends may be saddened by a suicide. If the deceased is a celebrity, there will be headlines. But really let's look at the big picture.
What is it- 7 billion people we have now? Maybe 1 billion who are starving, diseased, who have no hope for a full life? Even in the 'First World' there are thousands of homeless parents and children. We are killing hundreds, perhaps thousands each day with war, violence and mayhem. We are killing more with ordinary traffic and other accidents.
But some poor soul in the First World, who had opportunities, family and friends decides to off him/herself and it's a tragedy? It's only because we see ourselves in that person, and we don't see ourselves in the billion who are starving.
Lighten up, people. Just because we have money and computers and a decent car to drive to the club, doesn't mean that our lives are worth more than that billion. If you really want to shed a tear ...
...omphaloskepsis often...
Suicide hotlines and the like are fine to have, but the underlying problem is that we generally suck at helping people in chronically shitty conditions (whether medical, socioeconomic, or otherwise environmental). These big campaigns act like the big problem is convincing people to "get help", but the really big problem is how often the "help" fails to actually help (and no, it's not because Big Pharma is marginalizing psychodynamic therapy or whatever; we have a shitty understanding of most of these problems coupled with a lot of cultural baggage that tells us that the victim is unworthy of help).
You know what's amazingly effective at crushing hope? Doing all the stuff you're supposed to after being told "there is hope" and watching things get worse anyway.
I guess that Dice learned nothing from the last Beta roll out. Submissions are gone from the main menu, text is all over the place with clipped characters on the top line and links covering the bottom line, and the buttons are completely broken. Some don't look like buttons at all, just text, others are a solid color with same color text and white borders.
Just as bad, default content is now coming from two known shady operators taboola and oolaya. If you are not running AdBlock and NoScript don't visit Slashdot until that crap is gone.
Just like the last Beta no concern or care for users that have been making Slashdot Slashdot for well over a decade. No notice, no feedback, and obviously the only testing that occurred was some Dev located somewhere in the world "claimed" it worked for them.
Is the goal to chase away the consumers who contribute to make this site what it is?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
People who are going to actually commit suicide don't talk about it on Facebook, they do it, these people are rarely on Facebook in general.
I had it hammered into me a very long time ago that the root of rational --- productive --- debate is to expose the evidence that supports your arguments.
Forefront and Facebook launch suicide prevention effort
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
If you're thinking of committing suicide. Please remember.
No one cares, and it wont get any better.
...cruel world!
This is just another attempt to control people. What's it gonna be in 50 years ? I'll have my TV call police and save.org 5 days before it thinks I'm gonna commit suicide, based on my behavior in the last one month ? It's "we know what's good for you, not you.".
Fuck off all of you. I'm gonna live the way I want and I'm gonna die the way I want, and I don't need to facebook and save.org to tell me anything. Come to think of it.. even people close to me. It's MY life.
These people seriously, just ruined technology for me. I hate it for good couple of years already and having less and less of it.
Who wants to see how I score on their Suicide-o-Meter?
I mean, jeez. If you're going to put out a tool like this, at least allow me to crassly treat it like any other Facebook quiz while I fantasize about offing myself.
It's in their best interest to prevent suicides. After all, if their users go off killing themselves, who will they serve ads to?
Why are there so many people on here making jokes about this?!
It's not funny.
to do all things.
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...
. . . in 2013, but wasn't an active user of facebook at the time.
Lives saved by facebook: zero
Lives saved by oh-shit-this-hurts-way-more-than-wikipedia-told-me-it-would-hurt: one
...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?
Being told by Facebook that they think I might be suicidal ... would be a trigger that would make me HOMICIDAL. NONE OF THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS what's going on in my head. NONE OF THEIR CONCERN whether I speak to mental health professionals. GO STICK YOUR HEAD IN A PIG.
As per usual, the summary for this article is horribly inaccurate. If anyone had bothered to read the third paragraph from TFA (second link), it says:
Unlike Twitter's tool, Facebook is not automatically monitoring content that is posted on the social network. Instead, users are invited to get in touch if they notice troubling content from any of their contacts, and Facebook will then reach out with the offer of help, support and tips.
Emphasis mine.
If the Board at Facebook were that concerned about suicide, there are plenty of charities out there that they could done some of their huge salaries and bonuses too.
Or they could even make a corporate donation.
I am sorry for being so cynical, but *NOTHING* Facebook has ever done has been without a self-serving motive. We may not know what this one is, but there is one. Maybe it's to justify the psychological profiling of user posts. Who knows. Point being that there will almost certainly be a motive that is not being made public.
Leopards and Spots folks, Leopard and Spots
It's absolutely sickening how many trolls have responded to this topic with comments about people "just wanting attention" or the world being better off without them, and other such tripe.
The absolute cruelty and judgementalism of people who've never dealt with chronic depression or mental illness is just shameful.
This is the "intelligent" commentary of slashdot nowadays?
Man has this place ever gone down hill. How I long for the days of harmless "trolls" posting comments about Natalie Portman and hot grits, which did nothing more than annoy instead of being outright mean, spiteful, and hurtful.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
One of the things that helps suicidal people is having community. Facebook isn't great for that but is usually better than nothing, especially if a person's community is far away. If Facebook is going to report people for participating in the community when they feel suicidal, suicidal people are going to be less likely to participate when they are feeling suicidal. So this may backfire in a pretty big way.
But there are a lot of variables, and it's really hard to say. I would kind of like to see A/B experiments, but Facebook gets in trouble for those.
Are they afraid of losing eyeballs/revenue if they simply serve up some targeted ads for suicide prevention resources?
This seems a little weird. It depends on the implementation of course, but suppose you're expressing general despair about the future? Say because of environmental destruction, the burgeoning police state, disease, famine or the ignorance and violent tendencies of the human race? Might that rhetoric of hopelessness and despair be misinterpreted?
I don't mind being in a database of known political dissidents or with companies knowing enough about me to serve me targeted ads. It would be really bad to have "potentially suicidal" as a flag in one of the databases however. What happens if "potentially suicidal" & "political dissident" & "firearms enthusiast" lands you on the terrorism watch list or in the NICS database or something?
I sympathize with people who are depressed, but this sort of gives me the creeps.
A social media company data mining your communications and sharing the results with third parties shouldn't come as a shock to any social media user.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Facebook is only taking steps to ensure a steady revenue stream. They must prolong the agony of people who don't want to be here anymore so that there is plenty of drama to suck in the feeble minded. If there's no drama to pull in the tabloid mentality, who's gong to click those ads and spend money?
I'd probably be on suicide watch if I used Facebook everyday too.
Fortunately, I find Failbook much more entertaining.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
If you could opt in for suidcide watch, I would think this would be useful. But this to me screams, it is okay to psychoanalyze all posts. The first person they "save" especially if it is a bullied teenager, they will look like a hero and have such great publicity. Most people won't mind the all the data mining. You know you have to "think of the children."
...Uncle Sam, the gov't is killing itself trying to be everything to everybody.
They should be teaming with reddit and 4chan for this kind of stuff. That'll keep them busy for years.
If you use Facebook then you're basically posting to a public forum. If you're posting suicidal thoughts to the forum then you are likely reaching out for help whether you consciously realize it or not. This is basically an algorithmic way of identifying such behavior. Following up such flaggings with compassion from appropriate parties could keep someone from ending their life. I think it is a great idea.
But if you are not quite dead, we can sell you prozac, counseling services....
Does "automatically monitor keywords in search" mean the same thing as "sell search ads"? or is it something more than that?
"Samaritan Radar" appears to be an "app mashup" that doesn't require twitter's cooperation at all.
Facebook mocks look creepier, but don't seem to involve handing over search log snippets to suicide nonprofits without the user's interacting with an ad. They might be crass, bad for some of the people they're trying to help, or facilitate rudeness among users (or they might be good), but none of these is the same as a privacy problem implied by "monitor keywords in search".
I'm getting frustrated with "news" that's not working on my behalf, slashdot. What happened to Google Reader?
I don't think we can trust Samaritan's motives, Finch. Perhaps Lionel and I can take a look into what's going on while you see what information we can get from our "friend".
______
wow, is this formatting broken or what?
For a depressed, insecure person, Facebook serves as a platform to compare themself to others and judge themself (and be judged by others) while also failing to provide genuine human interaction. You have to remember that a severely depressed person is like an emotional masochist that is looking for any and all "evidence" that "justifies" their depression, which only makes the depression worse (It is a vicious cycle). As someone who has been through a severe and prolonged depression myself, the only advice I can give is: Do not lose sight of what is important and weather the storm.
I went through a horrible experience with the mental health care system in the US recently. A loved one was extremely depressed over a recent issue. They texted that they were calling a suicide hotline. We had text conversations over the next week and the individual consistently mentioned future events they were going to participate in and never stated anything other than they had been depressed. There was no attempt made and no statement that an attempt would be made.
The individual later sent a text to other people who were part of the original cause of the depressed state. These people contacted the individual's organization. The individual was placed in handcuffs and hauled off to a for-profit 72 hour lockup despite being involved in activities that were related to future events when the responders showed up and denying they were suicidal. The staff at the lockup facility gave them a hard time and threatened the (understandably angry) individual with injections. This was all done despite the individual repeatedly stating they were talking with people about the problem and were looking for outpatient counseling to deal with the depression. Great system we have here where the threat of lawsuits leads to zero intelligence on the part of those responding to and "evaluating" the threat of self-harm.
He Was a Quiet Man
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt07...
"Bob Maconel: You may ask why I did what I did. But what choice did you give me? How else could I get your attention? All I wanted to do is exist in your world. Just one person, would take time to actually see me. Help me find a way out."
"Neighbor Man: He seemed like a nice guy.
Nancy Felt: He was a quiet man."
They might have to do it because if you revolve your life around Facebook you just might get suicidal. I guess suicide is unintended side effect for too many hours spend on Facebook.
Paul E. Bahre