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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.
Yeah, if you're dead, you can't generate ad and datamining revenue for us, you insensitive clod!
++1. somebody had to say (post) it.
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
I just can't cope with this summary.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I saw a suicide note posted on Flickr. Friends got to the individual in time. I don't know the stats but if Facebook can do something to help keep someone from dying, I would not dismiss it. They will be raking through the postings regardless, nice to see something good come of it that's not just good for Facebook.
True, but the guy who is seeking attention this way probably needs some attention.
-Dave
Just yesterday I saw a woman who posted on her Facebook page three times before she jumped. Even if it's not the "usual" case, it still happens.
People who attempt suicide often send out multiple signals, many of which are not detected by anyone until after the fact. If a person is seeking attention then they need attention, otherwise their response might be escalation. The parent comment here needs to be modded down here for now knowing what you are talking about, even if you think you are being well meaning.
IT DOES HAPPEN. They do talk about it - not explicitly but the cry for help is here. My cousin just did this - today marks exactly 1 week. Going back to his Facebook posts it's clear now he was depressed and heading the wrong way! I wish they had this in place before!
Instead of taking an entire bottle of sleeping pills, imagine the outcome when they find out it's cialis....
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.
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.
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.
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...
. . . 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.
Why is the responsability of a stranger to discourage a suicidal that dosnt ask for help to avoid the suicidal thoughts?
You're not allowed to criticize Facebook or Microsoft. Before expressing any thoughts, please contact the appropriate public relations contractors to inquire about opinions that are permitted.
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?
A lot of times, those little comments or notes are the call for help.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, most of the people who give a shit are the (themselves hurt, wounded) instigators who are always happy to push other people towards suicide. Show weakness, and they appear to rip you to shreds.
...whiiiich is why I stopped using Facebook to begin with. I saw a memepic floating about recently that says G+ helps me like people I don't know and FB makes me hate people I used to like, something like that anyhow, and yeah it's so true.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
When I was younger, and angry in random directions, I was the sort who thought that suicidal people should just go ahead and commit suicide and get it the fuck over with for the benefit of the rest of us, so that we don't have to deal with their shit. I think it's a natural consequence of growing up in a world that doesn't give a fuck about you, and does its best to show it every time you come around a corner. I grew up poor and poorly socialized, and let me tell you, that's a severely depressing state. I had basically no sense of self-worth whatsoever until my twenties. Before that, I was just randomly mean, perhaps most of the time. I didn't really give a crap about anyone else, because why bother? What a waste of energy.
Now that I'm older and hopefully wiser, I recognize that this is the attitude that's destroying our society. What's missing, first and foremost, is caring about other people. That's why so few people for example feed the homeless, even though it would cost us so very little time and money, and it's also why towns actually arrest people for doing so. Because caring is hard, and they don't want to have to do it. You make them look bad, and you make them feel bad about themselves. They know that they aren't good human beings, and they don't want to be reminded.
Of course, I'm still mostly at the talk phase. Hopefully I'll get up to the doing phase. But at least I've advanced past the shitting on everything phase. Still a bit much negativity, working on that. Let's all try to grow the fuck up and be nicer. Yeah, irony, it's a bitch, and so have I been. But maybe I know what I'm talking about, from the inside.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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."
I doubt that family or friends should attempt to evaluate a depressed person. Getting professional help including appropriate medications and a good, controlled environment are key in many cases. Not only is suicide an issue but also many homicides flow from depression. For example numerous drunk drivers who end up in fatal wrecks are drunk due to underlying depression.
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.
Wow, they certainly take a tougher line on the Samaritan training courses these days.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Your comments are very thoughtful, but I would quibble with you when you call depression a chronic condition. Of course this is the prevailing view, but it suggests that depression is a purely physical and biological, and devoid of meaning. Such a view is relatively recent, dating from the 1980s, when Prozac was being marketed, and Eli Lilly needed to create the opinion that there was a medical need for their new drug. The logic of the "chronic" view of depression is that you have an incurable physical illness, and hence must take a pill for a long time, hopefully for life.
I am tempted to rant about corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, but instead I want to suggest an alternative explanation for depression: when I get depressed, there is an actual unresolved conflict, one that I'm trying to put out of my mind. My mental energies become tied up in the large effort needed to forget my conflict, which causes pain every time it comes to my consciousness. The lack of energy leads to loss of motivation, and the world seems too much to handle. This forgetting is what psychodynamic therapies call repression. We tend to forget very easily; being present and remembering actually takes dedication. As Nietzsche said,
"I have done this," says my memory. "I cannot have done this," says my pride, and remains steadfast. Eventually, memory yields.
I would suggest that depressed people try to get hold of a good psychodynamic therapist, one who will not simply focus on symptom management, but rather someone who can go deeper into what's actually tormenting you.
Terrible
APK
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.
Why is the responsability of a stranger to discourage a suicidal that dosnt ask for help to avoid the suicidal thoughts?
As other's have noted, suicide is a permanent solution to what is frequently a temporary problem. When someone is depressed, it can feel like they were always depressed. It can become nearly impossible to believe that life will ever "be worth living." That is the lie of depression.
Anyway, who said anything about it being the responsibility of a stranger? These people voluntarily helped someone in a time of need. Facebook and Twitter were not forced to help people in a time of need, they are doing it voluntarily. Does that bother you? Is there something wrong with helping other human beings?
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
well, if everyone's supposed to be a happy idiot, then something is wrong. Someone needs to put a stop to the real world and the bags of flesh that make being morons-of-happiness "the good thing."
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?
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
It isn't.
... unless, of course, you would want people to reach out to you if you were confused about what meaning your life had.
You might not want that, but I find most folks on \. don't understand what they would want if [insert X].