I read in the news today how Facebook is releasing a new so called suicide-prevention tool next week. The new feature allows so called ‘friends’ (who may in fact be total strangers) to report alleged suicidal behavior under a report option on the social network. This will then prompt Facebook to e-mail the presumed suicidal person with a link to a private chat with a person from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
The person who reports the alleged suicidal behavior will reportedly get an e-mail stating that Facebook has responded. The reporters’ identity will allegedly be kept secret for the alleged suicidal.
The problems with this are various. One, it opens the floodgates to abuse – for every Joe Schmoe that utters how he wants to jump off a bridge – being flagged as a suicidal. Further it permits depressed persons to be abused by being susceptible to the covert agendas of so called suicide prevention groups endorsed by Facebook.
These suicide prevention groups may in fact be big money donors to Facebook – with the intention of peddling psychiatric treatments and ultimately pharmaceutical drugs which will be sure to kill somebody. Thirdly, it further erodes the right to privacy and free communication, as certain multinational corporations unite with ‘big brother,’ doing much of the dirty work of surveillance for the government, monitoring and attempting to modify or stop one’s ability to freely communicate.
What I propose instead of a suicide button on Facebook, is a government, multinational corporation, and banking fraud alert button. With this button, every time a Facebook user witnesses fraud, lies, deceit, or criminal activity by a politician, multinational corporation such as Facebook or Google, a utility company, a telecommunications company, or a banking institution, one hits the Crime Alert Button. This will automatically send to the offending party, a pack of rabid wild dogs that will rip them to pieces.
The only problem with this – is that we just might run out of dogs. This just may do the job to make our world a safer, better place. And if that doesn’t work, I think I’m going to freakin’ kill myself. Oh wait, please don’t flag that on Facebook – I’m just kidding!