How Google (and we) encourage suicide

1 pointsbongs13y ago2 comments

The first link to "suicide" search results (https://www.google.com/search?q=suicide) to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide

It, unfortunately, has "Reasons" & "Methods" before "Prevention" and has no mention of why you shouldn't commit suicide.

At the bottom of the first page of the results, the first related search is "suicide methods" (http://imgur.com/7lJ02)

Further search for "suicide methods" results in the following first three links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_methods

http://wantdeath.blogspot.in/2011/07/fastest-and-painless-suicide-method.html

and

http://frater.com/suicidelist.html

There is no mention of why suicide is bad and it just gives the depressed person a way to end his/her life.

Sometimes these links are enough to push people over the edge.

I don't blame only Google, but I think the entire web & the web community (with SEO, SEM, Wikipedia edits, etc) contribute a lot for this disaster.

Is there a solution that you can suggest?

2 comments

Aenesidemus13y ago

The fact of the matter is that these sources (google, wikipedia, and others) exist not for your well being but to make information accessible. Are you proposing that google decide not to show/make sources available because it could be harmful to your or my welfare? I, for one, don't want someone else making the call of what I should or should not see because of what I might do with it. It isn't wikipedia's job to tell me my life is worth living.

That being said, I think google searches with the term 'suicide' should show a banner before any results that give hotline numbers and avenues for support.

Edit: That actually exists already. Problem solved!

gojomo13y ago

From previous coverage I recall, and a current search (from the USA) just confirmed, that above the first search result is a phone number for a suicide-prevention hotline.

Beyond that, do you have any evidence that "these links are enough to push people over the edge"?

It's possible the opposite is true: that receiving instant, accurate, agenda-free information about suicide actually reduces completed suicides, for example by exercising the imagination harmlessly, or making the details more salient and revulsive, or other mechanisms. You'd have to study the effects to be sure -- not just make guesses from intuition, which can be especially misleading when dealing with mood-disturbed masses.

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