Facebook's Suicide Form

Need we put one on our sites?

[tangor]

Facebook has introduced a service that allows users to report friends who have posted suicidal content on their account pages.

The Report Suicidal Content form, asks for the URL where the comments were made, the user's full name and other information. From there, “A Facebook administrator will review your report and take any available action from our end,” although the social network doesn't say exactly what that means.

[theregister.co.uk...]
Actually, there is an odd sense this is a good thing for community type sites.

Brett... do we need one here? I know a lot of web masters are feeling suicidal after Google's last algo change... :)

[weeks]

Hmmm.

This could start a trend. After this, Facebook could move on to having some type of intervention when signs of other self-destructive behaviors appear.

There should be a form for reporting when there are signs that your friend is thinking of:
-getting married,
-having children,
-starting their own business,
-investing in the stock market,
-buying a house,
-going into politics, or
-planting a garden.

[bluntforce]

I tend to get a fair amount of somewhat depressed people on my forum so there's a good amount of denial and anger.

Only once, years ago, did I have someone actually making significant noise about ending their life. It's not pleasant trying to make things better when I have absolutely no qualification for that kind of thing.

I have no idea as to the eventual result, but they stopped posting. Given Facebook demographics, I think it's a fairly decent idea.

[Leosghost]

Only once, years ago, did I have someone actually making significant noise about ending their life. It's not pleasant trying to make things better when I have absolutely no qualification for that kind of thing.

Leave a link to [samaritans.org...] on your pages if you think your members or visitors may have need..or if you are definitely very "local" in your cachement area place a link to the local site or add the local phone number ..if you search for "your country+ samaritans" you will find if the Sams have infrastructure there

Sams are trained ..and are in many countries

The facebook scheme is run in conjunction with the Samaritans.

Ex Sam ..will be again if time permits

[bluntforce]

Thanks, Leosghost

I'm in the middle of forum redesign and will look to incorporate the link. It's national U.S., so it'll have to be generic.

With forums, I've always experienced far more lurkers than posters and always wonder what the lurkers bring away. Certainly can't hurt, and if it helps someone through a difficult time, then I've done my job.

[jecasc]

What do they want to do with the input? Actually send help or only update the facebook status to: "Dangling from a rope on a hook"? Or sell the info to Larry's used coffins..

[Leosghost]

Read the link ..

[jecasc]

Read the link ..

I did. It says:

A Facebook administrator will review your report and take any available action from our end,” although the social network doesn't say exactly what that means.

[Leosghost]

The Samaritans link

[StoutFiles]

I remember back in the heyday of AOL Instant Messanger, AOL had bots that you could talk to that would try to mimic a human conversation! They were mildly entertaining, and if you said things like you hated them or wanted to kill them enough times, they would stop talking to you till you apologized. Funny! But, if you ever said you were going to kill yourself, they would NOT respond, ever. Why is that? I have to assume it's because AOL wouldn't want to be in any way responsible for the death legally.

That said, I'm not sure what a Facebook administrator could do that wouldn't be considered pushing someone over the edge. Removing posts, blocking accounts, or even not acting on suicide reports since they say they will...all these could be used against Facebook legally if that person were to kill themselves. I'm not even sure why Facebook would do this, the slight PR boost isn't worth it once they get sued.