March 23, 2015

How not to test Facebook's suicide prevention program

Tech Worm - 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.

On 26th February 2015, Tusch posted his frustrations regarding the stress he had been facing due to first amendment made to his home loan by the bank. He posted that he was undergoing trouble paying his bank debts for quite some time and in the post he declared that he would take his life in some public place... Soon Tusch’s Facebook account was locked and in the meantime some unknown person who read this post informed police. San Mateo police took Tusch in their custody and inquired him regarding the post which Tusch confirmed was written by him however he also made it clear to the police that he was not planning for a suicide, this was just to release his frustrations regarding the First Amendment made by Bank America and he wanted to get this in public. Tusch was detained in a mental asylum for about 72 hours i.e. 3 days. Not only that it seems he was tested for TB, HIV and overall 7 blood tests done along with his urine tests. He also posted that he was kept in a very inhumane conditions.

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