Fake Suicide Attempt Tests Facebook Prevention Tool, Lands Man In Asylum

First time accepted submitter abhishekmdb writes Shane Tusch faked his suicide in an attempt to test the authenticity of Facebook suicide prevention tool and got detained for 72 hours. Facebook has rolled out a set of tools to keep a check on its users who are having suicidal tendencies and prevent these users from suicidal attempts. In case some user is having suicidal thoughts and mentions that in the Facebook posts and if a friend of that user reports it to Facebook then a third party will immediately review the post and Facebook would lock the suicidal user's account and the user will be made to read Facebook's suicide prevention materials.

Comments

Re:Oh, *BRILLIANT*

[Dorianny]

I'm sorry, this whole thing sounds BS to me. While it makes sense to have the Authorities to look at and interview the victim^Hsoftware tester, putting a 72 hour mental health hold on someone is hard. You have to convince more than one person that you are serious. Most places don't want to hold people - it's a lot of paperwork, hassle and expense and there are enough genuine fruitcakes so as to leave few extra rooms at the inn. Even if he got tossed in on a hold, it would be reviewed after 24 hours.

Either San Mateo does really weird things or this was made up.

You are assuming that he was not complicit and wanted to be held for as long as possible. To me this whole thing sounds like a ploy for 15 minutes of infamy.

Re:Great example

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Facebook doesn't verify your identity when signing up for an account.... how long before the bad guys start setting up fake accounts or hacking FB accounts and ransoming people?

Example would be: "Pay me $1000, or you will be picked up the police and put in mental institution. [insert pmt instructions]"

New tool gives the bad guys the means.

Re:Oh, *BRILLIANT*

[Znork]

You can find any number of stories about people without any acting skills convincing those professionals that they are psychotic. Frankly, it's just a question of presenting the correct initial criteria, of which the first one will be 'being delivered by the police', and confirmation bias will take care of the rest. Seeing a lot of pathology simply doesn't help that much when symptoms are as vague and subject to interpretation as they are with mental illness.

Usually people seem to have a harder time convincing the professionals that they are, in fact, perfectly rational and not suffering from any serious mental illness. That will of course be an uphill battle against confirmation bias; they are, after all, in a psychiatric holding facility.

Re:Great example

[Reziac]

The immediate effect I'd predict is more suicides, because the suicidal user who already believes they don't count because no one listens to them now has hard evidence that no one listens to what they have to say -- after all, they're just been silenced by Facebook.