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Jack Dorsey Responds To Serial Killer Who Found His Victims Through Suicidal Twitter Posts (nhk.or.jp)

Posted by BeauHD on from the mental-health dept.

AmiMoJo shares a report from NHK WORLD: Twitter's CEO is reacting to a grisly case in Japan where a suspected serial killer allegedly found his victims through their suicidal posts on the social media platform. In an interview with NHK, Jack Dorsey said it is unrealistic and impossible to remove suicidal tweets. But he said he hoped Twitter could become a tool for prevention. Last month, the dismembered bodies of 9 people were found in 27-year-old Takahiro Shiraishi's apartment near Tokyo. Police say he admitted to the killings. They believe he preyed on people who posted about wanting to kill themselves on Twitter. Recently, Twitter updated its rules regarding posts about self-harm: "You may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm. When we receive reports that a person is threatening suicide or self-harm, we may take a number of steps to assist them, such as reaching out to that person and providing resources such as contact information for our mental health partners."

73 comments

  1. Nobody cares by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Until you've got a gun in your hand. Try getting help if you're or your loved one isn't actively trying to commit suicide. Bottom line mental health care is expensive and nobody wants to pay for it. Especially when it's so easy to tell somebody to get over it, it's all in your head.

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    1. Re: Nobody cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "When we receive reports that a person is threatening suicide or self-harm, we may take a number of steps to assist them..."

      But all they really want is someone to pull the trigger.

      If someone wants to die, it's not the time to be holier than thou. It's time to start treating people with respect.
      The biggest reason people are offing themselves these days is because everyone treats everyone like everyone is a joke.
      So what if I'm a joke? Does that mean I don't deserve to work and live?
      Are you gonna pull the trigger then?

    2. Re: Nobody cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The reason they're committing suicide is usually because, at the time, they think it's better than staying alive. This can be a very temporary state, and why they need help. It could also be that they're terminally ill and the rest of their life isn't going to be any better than unconsciousness.

    3. Re: Nobody cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The biggest reason people commit suicide is because they have mental health issues. How they are treated can play a big part in that, they have to have a predisposition to depression and suicidal thoughts to begin with. Some people may use the term weak to describe the people with these mental health issue. Which really isn't fair, they need help.

      In reality, few, if any, really want someone else to pull the trigger. Most people considering suicide do not want to die, but for some reason they cannot see past their situation to a solution to get out of it and they take an easy way out.

    4. Re: Nobody cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No no no.

      There are three prime reasons for Suicidal tenancies:

      a) The person is in physical pain and wants to die, this can be temporary (eg cancer or even the flu can make you so sick that you're in a lot of pain and don't think right) or it can be permanent (hence right-to-die laws) where the pain will never get better, or the treatments are worse than the pain.

      b) The person is in mental anguish and thinks they don't deserve to live. This is usually a form of Survivors Guilt, often caused by the person believing that they should have perished with someone else who did die, or that they were fired from their job for reasons that are their fault and feel absolutely worthless.

      c) The person has consumed alcohol or other narcotics to such a degree that their judgement is impaired and see point B. This also includes people with Autism, or various kinds of birth defects that gives them a low quality of life (eg most Little people can get through life, but they're often recommended against having children, and people with Intersex conditions often can't have children, and women with PCOS or Men with XXY genes can't ever have their own children.)

      What happens in Japan is that people kill themselves via suicide pacts, and ritual suicide is still a thing for failing your family or workplace. Officially it isn't, but people still believe the only way to redeem oneself after a gross failure is to kill themselves. This can be anything from failing an entrance exam, to crashing the company's stock.

    5. Re: Nobody cares by Hal_Porter · · Score: 1

      Suicidal tenancies suck. They don't pay the rent and the poor landlord has to clean up after them. And by the end of the contract they'd be good and ripe too!

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    6. Re:Nobody cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if you have money it's still hard to deal with it. The inexplicable case of director Tony Scott (Top Gun being one of his most well known movies) is a case in point. Family, success, fame. Why did he jump off a bridge? So far no one seems to have been able to explain it.

    7. Re:Nobody cares by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Until you've got a gun in your hand. Try getting help if you're or your loved one isn't actively trying to commit suicide. Bottom line mental health care is expensive and nobody wants to pay for it. Especially when it's so easy to tell somebody to get over it, it's all in your head.

      Yup. It's part of why people self harm with blades. Visible, blood and everything, but controllable and safe. The hospital has proof that you did actually hurt yourself and you get the help you need.

      Whereas you can't shoot yourself in the head or hang yourself a little bit unless you really know what you're doing.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    8. Re: Nobody cares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You people have no idea what you're on about. There are a million different individualized hellish little reasons that people can want to kill themselves. You're far oversimplifying things. I also think you're just projecting your worst fears and going "that's why people kick it!" when you can't imagine all of the other myriad of things you can't see.

      Not to mention your ableist bullshit about people with disabilities or addictions. And somehow people can only have mental anguish over survivor's guilt? Trust me when I say a mental illness can cause you constant emotional pain that no one else can see to the point where you think of suicide many times a day. Unconsciously because the thought of death, while still painful, is also a comfort. At least you know at some point it'll be over and you can stop feeling this way.

      So quit trying to wrap this up in a pretty little bow. People kill themselves for reasons you could never even think of and certainly don't boil down to a petty little unhelpful list. Listen to people who are hurting and try to genuinely care without pushing your preconceived ideas.

  2. Assisted Suicide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So twitter is closed off now to people advocating for compassionate assisted suicide?

  3. The Changing World by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mental health care and mental illness has always been problematic, and while in the past it was primarily the responsibility of friends and family to take action if there was a concern, with our increasingly connected society, there is increased responsibility to escalate posts of concern to the proper authorities/mental health professionals. The problem with Facebook, Google and the other internet monopolies is that they want this massive marketshare, but then are demonstrably incapable of handling the responsibilities that come with it.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    1. Re:The Changing World by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And who says responsibility comes with it? Why is it their job suddenly because they make a generic way to talk to others? When phone networks went up was it suddenly Bell's job to listen in and report anyone talking about killing themselves?

    2. Re:The Changing World by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Do you think OP was a cry for help? Maybe Slashdot should report it.

    3. Re:The Changing World by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Phone conversations are private. Social media posts are not.

    4. Re:The Changing World by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 2

      while in the past it was primarily the responsibility of friends and family to take action if there was a concern [about mental illness]

      For the vast majority of people in the past, if you were crazy you lived as a vagrant or a beggar and died in pretty short order afterwards. Nobody gave a shit about your life even if you wanted to stay alive, let alone if you wanted to off yourself. If you came from a moderately wealthy family, you might get to live in a horrific asylum (and that was in the 19th century, not even talking about medieval times, which holy crap they'd probably assume you were possessed by a demon and flay you to save your soul) instead of dying of pneumonia on the streets.

      I don't know what sugar coated history books they taught you, but the past is fucking bleak and miserable.

    5. Re:The Changing World by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody gave a shit about your life even if you wanted to stay alive, let alone if you wanted to off yourself.

      It used to be common to severely punish the entire families of people who committed suicide - not that the feudal lords actually cared about the wellbeing of their serfs, per se, but less serfs meant less profits.

    6. Re:The Changing World by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And who says responsibility comes with it? Why is it their job suddenly because they make a generic way to talk to others?

      For the same reason why they are held responsible when people share child porn on their platforms.

    7. Re:The Changing World by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      I was referring to the more recent past: 1950s through 1970s where involuntary commitment in sanitariums kept the mentally ill from harming themselves or others. It was certainly not perfect, but after the 1970s where the ACLU essentially eliminated involuntary commitment, we are back to the mentally ill living on the streets and sleeping in doorways... No one is saying the mentally ill have had it easy throughout history, but at least in the 1960s they had a roof over their head and 3 square meals a day and someone trying to help them.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    8. Re:The Changing World by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It's a moral responsibility. Human beings sometimes feel those.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:The Changing World by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      and other times that child the step parent did not really want, or troublesome younger sister you did not want to deal with, ended up with a twist drill inserted into their head.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    10. Re:The Changing World by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 1

      OK fair enough. And I have no dispute that, while the asylums were awful, de-institutionalization was also (a different kind of) awful.

      What I will continue stand by, however, is that pointing to very recent developments (~50 years, out of 3000 years of human history) and referring to it as "the past" is incredibly selective.

    11. Re:The Changing World by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 1

      Or sold into slavery. Or impressed into the army or navy. Or prostituted. For most of history, the majority of humans existing in some form of slavery/serfdom in which they had zero agency whatsoever.

      It just annoys me that our current discourse is so fragile that we feel the need to whitewash the past. And I think it contributes to a lot of errors in our thinking because we lost the perspective of where we came from and how things were. We think that things are going downhill in our country (here in the US) even though 100 years ago we still had Jim Crow and 200 years ago we still had slavery. Europeans are pessimistic, even though 200 years ago they were still fighting wars over whether Protestants would be allows to practice in Catholic countries and vice versa.

      We have it so goddamned good (obviously the present is not perfect, the US still has racism, Europe still has divisions, that's a straw man argument) that we became soft and then our softness made us unable to comprehend the horrors of history which, in turn, made us unable to understand how good we have it. It's pervasive.

    12. Re:The Changing World by Kielistic · · Score: 1

      Does the owner of a coffee shop have to actively monitor all conversations between patrons and interfere with anything deemed "problematic"?

    13. Re:The Changing World by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depending on which social media site and what it's privacy settings allow. Obviously not on Twitter, but with Facebook, posts can be most definitely be set to exactly who you want to see, eavesdropping/screenshotting be damned I guess, in relation to Twitter, a DM would be better analogy.

    14. Re:The Changing World by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Morally, the thing to do would be to abide their wishes. The ethical thing to do would be to start looking at reducing Earth's population.

    15. Re:The Changing World by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      The history I am referring to is the recent past, something like 1950 to 1970, after which the ACLU eliminated involuntary confinement, and the government shut down the majority of sanitariums in favor of "pill" treatments which clearly do not work for a large swath of the mentally ill. Were there historically a few people committed who did not be long? I am sure there were and it was shitty for them. That single issue could have been more easily addressed with some form of independent federal oversight, rather than completely shutting down the system as was actually done by the ACLU and the supreme court.

      In the real world, no system is perfect. However, we have reverted to the state that the mentally ill existed in for the last 3000 years, being treated like human garbage, living on the street, committing assaults and murders on themselves or the public. The progress that had been made with involuntary commitment was wiped out by the misguided lawyers at the ACLU, and now we have to live with the result, where we have paranoid schizophrenics and psychotics and sociopaths running around free in a society where we have a lot of individual responsibility (in the form of cars, guns and the easy ability to make bombs, etc.) Rather than limiting the freedom of everyone, we need to realize that the mentally ill do not need freedom, they need protection from themselves, and it may not be pretty, but that is the truth of the matter.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    16. Re:The Changing World by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      It is true that we have it good, and to a large extent, the reason we have it good is because we used to have the majority of the electorate in the US well educated and capable of thinking for themselves. They cared about truth and pursued it and they voted based on the truth they had found. The system was never perfect, but it was continuously getting better, and then the Democrats realized that they were losing power, so they switched their focus from graft, election rigging and political beatings and started focusing on identity politics, brainwashing in state run schools, and controlling the narrative by controlling the media. In the last 8 years, the alt-left progressives almost succeeded in destroying the country. They have been importing 3rd world peasants both legally and illegally by the millions per year, and enacting legislation that was destroying the middle class. The goal of the alt left is to get 60% of the voting population as ignorant, illiterate peasants who will vote Democrat in exchange for handouts and table scraps. At that point, the Dims can do whatever the hell they want and always get elected and the country as we know it will be gone. They already succeeded in California. Before the amnesty that they talked Regan into, California was a Republican state with a history of Republican governors. After the 1986 amnesty, California became a guaranteed blue state.

      Almost every liberal I have ever spoken to is convinced of their virtue over everyone else, they are confident in their superiority, but they can't argue their position out of a paper bag, because they don't have a clue about logic or the actual facts, it is all emotion, backstopped by their education on what to think and the fake news media. If their population grows large enough, the US will devolve into a third world cesspool of corruption like Mexico or Venezuela. Both of whom used to be much better off with a democratic government, but who lost their countries through ignorance and government handouts.

      The price of freedom is not only eternal vigilance, but knowledge and keeping abreast of the issues and facts and the capability of wading through the bullshit and emotion.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  4. Shut up Dorsey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nobody cares about your sewer of the internet. Twitter is for the sub 100 IQ crowd. Eternal September took roost in Twitter and Facebook.

    1. Re:Shut up Dorsey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nobody cares about your sewer of the internet. Twitter is for the sub 100 IQ crowd. Eternal September took roost in Twitter and Facebook.

      You managed that in under 140 chars ... join us!

    2. Re:Shut up Dorsey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody cares about your sewer of the internet. Twitter is for the sub 100 IQ crowd. Eternal September took roost in Twitter and Facebook.

      You managed that in under 140 chars ... join us!

      #TwitGolf

    3. Re:Shut up Dorsey by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      #TwitGolf

      Not legal in my country.

      At least that's what the cop said after I bashed that twits head in with a sand wedge.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Logical conclusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Matching supply with demand. What could be more capitalist than that?

    1. Re:Logical conclusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How did the killer get the victims' addresses through their suicidal posts? It's not as if twitter posters post their real names and addresses.

    2. Re:Logical conclusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What could be more capitalist than that?

      Profiting from it.

    3. Re:Logical conclusion by TheCastro1689 · · Score: 1

      Another article talked about it, he would message them, then direct message them, then encourage them to meet him to help the die or something.

  6. Just go on and get it over with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Twitter, we all see the gun you've been holding up to your head for the last couple days. (Honestly, we never particularly liked you anyway, but at least until recently you were relatively inoffensive and harmless.) But if you're going to ban another topic, my concern is that not everyone is going to condemn you enough. Someone might even defend your asshattery. Someone else might think it's normal and expected for things that appear to be generic communication websites, to have forbidden topics. And that would be a bad thing. So I've tipped and I'm finally decided to encourage you to proceed with your absurd policy changes.

    Just do it.

    Do it now, and get it over with: in your TOS, simply enumerate what topics are allowed to be discussed on your site. We know you have two lists, and you're trying to decide between blacklist and whitelist. But everyone knows: whitelists are the best approach. So do it, and then I don't ever have to hear about Twitter again.

    "Just make sure you do it right the first time, 'cause nothing's worse than a suicide chump" - FZ

  7. Black Mirror? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this an episode of Black Mirror?
    Is this life imitating art?

  8. Bad idea by countach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Surely we wouldn't want to censor the cry for help that could save their life? This serial killer thing is a one off.

    1. Re: Bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A serial one off.....

    2. Re:Bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The cry for victims to con? Nah this guy is a natural born hero and in a better world he would be a police officer.

      I have seen these places online where they glorify human torment and suicide. Trust me this guy did the world a justice.

    3. Re:Bad idea by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Who said anything about censoring cries for help?

      The Twitter ToS say you can't encourage other people to harm themselves. Saying you want to harm yourself is fine, although if someone flags it Twitter might intervene somehow such as calling local medical services.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  9. If you want to kill someone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...join the military. They will even train and pay you to do it.

    1. Re:If you want to kill someone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really an option for mentally unstable people, as killing and not following protocols can lead straight to discharge with option to live on street in the end and in worst cases to prison before that.

      IMO, army with all the training can only make things worse, by producing people with PTSD. Also, there are too many rules for killing and war at this stage is job only for robots - until they have complex brains...

  10. Yes but. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you are muslim and talk about killing everyone for everything that's just fine with twitter.

    Bonus points if you focus on killing white men.

  11. Bullshit by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    treat them with respect _before_ they want to die. It's like the right wing being anti-abortion and then cutting child insurance programs. Nobody really gives a fuck. They just want to seem like they do.

    --
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    1. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Way to pwn your own argument.

      "treat them with respect _before_ they want to die.".. like, before they are born and stuff?

    2. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And here to the left we observe the Slashtard, a common native of the landscape, one who overestimates his own IQ by about 50 or even more.

    3. Re:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So wanting to stop people from killing babies is somehow inconsistent with not wanting to force people to pay for other people to take their kids to the doctor?

  12. I think you're unclear by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    on the concept of 'suicide'. It doesn't mean killing other people.

    --
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    1. Re:I think you're unclear by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      But if you're suicidal, the military ain't the worst place to be either.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  13. Ummm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    on the concept of 'suicide'. It doesn't mean killing other people.

    Takahiro Shiraishi didn't commit, nor AFAIK, attempt suicide.

  14. Caring == extra costs for Twitter by thesjaakspoiler · · Score: 1

    So never expect any empathy from Jack Dorsey because any attempt to intervene is a penny from his own pocket/bonus.

  15. Re:Japanese are so nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, but did the killer apologize for killing his victims 20 seconds too early?

    *says in a hushed voice*....too soon.....too soon......

  16. What Twitter should do? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It may be difficult or impossible to detect and remove all tweets but since the serial killer found some then apparently it is possible to find some.

    Not sure if deleting the best solution but as suggested if can help by routing support options that sounds more constructive. Given the publicity of the killings think most people will be more aware of the dangers on Twitter and beyond to be careful of strangers. Japan being a fairly safe place can see how the victims guard down as they were already emotionally down.

    1. Re:What Twitter should do? by antifoidulus · · Score: 1

      The people can also just switch platforms, well before Twitter there were shadowy forums in Japan where people who wanted to kill themselves in a group could congregate and plan their final exit. I remember as far back as 2003 reading about a group of people(at least 5 IIRC) who found each other using one of these services who all agreed to sit in a car together and inhale exhaust until they died.... Not sure why people in Japan find committing suicide easier if they do it with other people(or in a famous place, I've been to Japan's "suicide forest" and found a skeleton), I guess its less lonely....

      --
      Monstar L
  17. Mental illness is not the problem by whyyisthissohard · · Score: 2

    Desperation and grief are not mental illnesses. They are sound and logical reactions to a hostile environment.

    We have to stop pretending that everything in our westernized societies is okay and that the people who can't adapt are insane somehow. It's not these people that need treatment by and large, it's this society that needs treatment.

    The few cases of people born with clear physical defects that lead to depression are not a significant fraction of people who commit suicide or want to.

  18. Twitter was an accident... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Twitter was a company that was born by accident. The technology was a side project that took off on its own. The four founders were more interested in playing musical chair with the CEO spot. The revenue model came years after burning through VC funding. One founder pulled a Steve Jobs by quoting Steve Jobs, listening to the music that Steve Jobs liked, dressing up in a Steve Jobs uniform (same clothes, simple style), and staging a Steve Jobs comeback after starting another company. Mark Zuckerburg called Twitter a clown car that fell into a gold mine.

    Source: "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal"

  19. What? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    As much as I detest Twitter, I fail to see how this kind of thing is really Twitter's fault or responsibility.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  20. Jack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since Jack is a cannibal, he probably wanted to hear the juicy details on dismemberment, pun intended ;)

  21. So lefties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Want you to commit suicide the correct way. Via doctor assist. Better not do it yourself. Lefties don't want anyone to do anything for themselves.

  22. says whom? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does this mean that McDonalds is going to lose theiir twitter account? What about the church of scientology?

  23. Re:Japanese are so nice by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    It's only funny when it's too soon.

    Like: What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve?
    Christopher Walken.

    See? Not funny anymore. 20 years ago it was a riot! Timing is everything when telling jokes.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  24. The best thing about the internet... by Oxygen99 · · Score: 1

    ... is that it brings people together. Coincidentally, that's also the worst thing.

    --
    I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
  25. Serial Killer or Suicide Service Provider? by n329619 · · Score: 2

    Let's put Jack Dorsey on the side. For the japanese guy who did all this, should he even be considered a serial killer? The thing is, it looks like he is doing a service to those people like the right-to-die.

    Although this is not a service that makes any sense ( Irony: a lot of Japanese stuff doesn't make any sense) within a moral and civil society where being alive is important, it still does question his initial action of 'is it wrong'. Think about those movies like an injured soldier wanted you to end his life with one last bullet or a sick love one suffering life long pain wishing to end it. It is a difficult moral choose we make as we debate the right and wrong of our choice. But if there's someone else doing it, is he wrong?

    If it wasn't for the dismembering (wtf why did he do it), it maybe worth to conduct further investigation on what actually happened, to see whether or not he should be named a serial killer or in fact a suicide service provider.

    1. Re:Serial Killer or Suicide Service Provider? by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2

      There is a reason why even most people who support right to die assisted suicides support a rigorous process of confirming that it's a real, persistent desire. Many suicidal thoughts, and even attempts, are temporary (not that that should discourage people from seeking help if someone is thinking about, threatening or attempted suicide; many are not without help).

      This person didn't do that. So, yeah, he's a serial killer.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    2. Re:Serial Killer or Suicide Service Provider? by DarkOx · · Score: 2

      Except European countries are by and large moving forward with euthanasia both for people with other mental illness and children.

      Essentially at least within American circles everything conservatives feared would follow from opening the door to assisted suicide is rapidly coming true. Just like here in the states where "safe legal and rare" has turned into "at any stage, for any reason, on demand, and on the tax payer dime" with regard to abortion. Next most of us in the center figured as far as all these 'transsexuals/transgenders' go, hey its free country if adults want to have their junk mocked up to look like that of the other sex whatever. Now prepubescent children are being encouraged to transition, and being given drugs and procedures that will have life long physical consequences if they change their minds, which many are being found to do.

      You say this person did not make sure its a real persistent desire. I can tell you the "medical professionals" won't bother asking those question past maybe the first generation of "practitioners". They will quickly move toward utilitarian thinking. "This person is suffering and says they want to die...well gee that is the quickest way to end that suffering...so here swallow this" is how it will start to play out more and more. Nobody will really ask is this person mentally fit to make this choice, what other treatments haven't been tried that might help, etc. Our hospitals and sanitariums will simply turn into slaughter houses.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    3. Re:Serial Killer or Suicide Service Provider? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "at any stage, for any reason, on demand, and on the tax payer dime" is utterly false. All but 1.4% of abortions in the US take place BEFORE the 20-week mark when brain activity begins to show regular patterns indicating that the fetus is medically alive. That rate is easily accounted for by the number of pregnancies that would be life-threatening to the mother; if you make those very rare abortions illegal, you will literally kill women.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#When_women_have_abortions_.28by_gestational_age.29

  26. People kill themselves because... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ....of inert deliberate digressions, like when a tragedy occurs and they fight about some minutiae instead of just having compassion and acceptance.

  27. Let's talk religion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know most of slashdot is atheist, but with respect to situations like this, it sure would be wonderful if it turns out that both heaven AND hell exist. Don't you think?

  28. Impossible you say? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

    Jack Dorsey said it is unrealistic and impossible to remove suicidal tweets.

    I could probably do it with a grep script, but if you have the resources, some machine learning could be helpful too. You could give users a suicide "heat level" based on the output of the grep script and user reports, and focus the attention of the more resource intensive machine-learning algorithm on the "hottest" users.

    Now give me a million dollars for this amazing innovation.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  29. Re:Japanese are so nice by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    The Japanese are brilliant. Nearly as great as the Chinese. Blacks and Hispanics are pretty good too.

    White people are stupid.

    If you don't believe me, ask the submitter.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."