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Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit

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Re: Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit

#11

Post by photochemsyn »

Sounds better than Reddit's system of 'suicide alerts':

> "Reddit has partnered with Crisis Text Line to provide redditors who may be considering suicide or seriously hurting themselves with support from trained Crisis Counselors. If you’re worried about someone, you can let us know by reporting the specific post or comment that worried you and selecting, Someone is considering suicide or serious self-harm. After you let us know, we’ll reach out (confidentially) to put them in touch with Crisis Text Line’s trained Crisis Counselors."

However, many people on Reddit seem to view this as an opportunity for harrassment of those they disagree with, by generating bogus reports. Any thoughts on how to avoid those kind of outcomes?

Re: Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit

#12

Post by robertrmorris »

photochemsyn wrote: post #11

Sounds better than Reddit's system of 'suicide alerts': > "Reddit has partnered with Crisis Text Line to provide redditors who may be considering suicide or seriously hurting themselves with support from trained Crisis Counselors. If you’re worried about someone, you can let us know by reporting the specific post or comment that worried you and selecting, Someone is considering suicide or serious self-harm. After you…

Yea this is an interesting problem. The whole question of whether, when, or how to intercept someone who might be in trouble is really challenging and we’ve thought about this for many years (and had some missteps along the way and learned a lot on what works and what doesn’t).

Our system gently recommends our service to users right when they search and so the cost of a false positive is low (they can just ignore it or it might just seem like an unrelated PSA). Search is also great because we can vary the intensity of the keywords. For one of our partners, we’re now surfacing resources (in subtle ways) for lower risk searches like “depression.” It is super important to us to think about how we might help people upstream, before they reach a state of crisis.

For users flagged, we work well as a layer on top of CTL as our ux works for people across the entire spectrum of severity.

Re: Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit

#13

Post by jotm »

photochemsyn wrote: post #11

Sounds better than Reddit's system of 'suicide alerts': > "Reddit has partnered with Crisis Text Line to provide redditors who may be considering suicide or seriously hurting themselves with support from trained Crisis Counselors. If you’re worried about someone, you can let us know by reporting the specific post or comment that worried you and selecting, Someone is considering suicide or serious self-harm. After you…

Haha, that's actually more of a warning. If you don't quit posting about suicide, they temporarily suspend your account, then if you do it again, they permanently ban your account, and if you do it yet again (say, you're a complete loser who can't get through with it, with zero help and the only thing you can do is, well, complain about it online) you get permabanned based on your IP and email info.

Even in the few subreddits dedicated to it, you have to be real careful about what you post if you don't want a ban.

Out of sight out of mind... yeah, I guess it works. Reddit doesn't need suicidal people posting about this problem, it hurts the platform and they can't do anything about it anyway, to be fair.

Source: me and 4 people I've talked about it, all were previously banned. Not much, I know, but I'm confident enough they do it on the regular. Again, not really blaming Reddit here, they're a business not a charity.

Re: Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit

#16

Post by singlow »

matsemann wrote: post #14

Is "koko" also a slang for being crazy/unstable/insane in English, or is it just in Scandinavian languages this sounds a bit funny?

Koko is a character from the operetta The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan. He is a death row convict appointed to be executioner.

Re: Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit

#17

Post by robertrmorris »

throwmeariver1 wrote: post #15

[flagged]

We’re a non-profit and our service will always be available for free. There is no paywall. We support ourselves through donations. This should be more clear on our landing page, thanks for noting this.

Re: Launch HN: Koko (YC W22 Nonprofit) – Online Suicide Prevention Kit

#20

Post by robertrmorris »

misslibby wrote: post #19

What resources do you link to? Can't find it on your homepage?

Hi, thanks for your interest. The resources appear differently for different platforms we integrate with. In some cases they can be accessed via DM. Some will differ based on the search term as well. The most generic case is here: https://join.kokocares.org/koko-referral-lifelines?source=hn" We are actively updating these based on user feedback.
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