> Many, if not most, of these places give the operator full access to your phone number and whatever geolocation data they can get based on that. They also have policies where the operator is allowed/encouraged to call emergency services on you without your ongoing consent, or even without telling you. In my experience talking with others who have been affected by those kinds of policies, this can lead to police breaking down your door while you're naked and crying, or worse. A person in deep crisis is not likely to respond well to armed officers showing up, as the police are more likely to come into the situation looking for conflict.
Hi, CTL volunteer here. I have some gripes with a few of your assertions.
It's true that CTL was caught sharing data. They have retracted that policy, and it remains unclear to me how much of the data was being shared to which level of granularity. Since then, data can be manually deleted after a conversation is concluded. I have seen this happen, and I welcome you to try again if you would like to test the system. That is welcomed.
Each counselor is required to treat each texter with empathy and the gravity that a mental health crisis requires. I do not know of anyone on the platform who would disparage a texter because his/her/their crisis isn't significant enough. If you text CTL, it is for a reason, and we want to help you through that moment no matter your background.
Another important distinction is that we are trained to risk assess each and every texter, irrespective of our intuition about their mental state. That means I treat someone testing the system like I would someone who has been flagged as an imminent suicide risk.
Supervisors monitor this evolution of the conversation closely.
The assessment is important because ultimately the decision to call emergency services comes after that rigorous assessment of the person's suicidal ideation, followed by their plan and access to means, as well as their timeline. If all those criteria are met, I contact my supervisor, and then we work on separation from means. If those criteria are not met, we continue the conversation accordingly.
I have personally walked numerous people back from the edge simply by talking to them and hearing them out; often times, texters deemed imminent risks are capable of staying safe that night after we have come up with a safety plan for them together. Calling EMS is truly a last resort and not an attempt to cast off responsibility.
In the cases when we do call emergency services, it is after we have exhausted all other options. It should be noted that access to geolocation is strictly limited to these supervisors, and in all likelihood is limited to a texter's phone number alone. It's not like they have a backdoor into AT&T, and the supervisor must make a call to emergency services directly. From what I can tell, very little information is given back to CTL. On occasion, I can see a timeline that EMS was dispatched but rarely do I ever learn about the outcome.
The success of the platform is that we can work with people to find them their own solutions. CTL was not a viable intermediary for calling 911.
All in all, I recommend other readers to treat the post above with a grain of salt. Please be aware that platforms such as CTL are frequently volunteer-staffed, and, while we all do receive 20 hours of mandatory training, we aren't psychologists and we are not allowed to act in a medical capacity in the slightest. Each counselor is expected to work within a strict purview with clear objectives. Lots of well-intentioned people are there for whoever needs support. As far as volunteering goes, this is some of the most emotionally-involved I've ever had to do, and it pains me to read reviews of CTL that paint it is a data profiteering lab of pseudo-psychologists and dismissive blowhards.
Lastly, should data privacy be a cornerstone to these services? Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. But I am glad that this service exists, and we should not miss the forest for the trees. Many of our colleagues, friends, relatives, and countrywomen are suffering right now more than ever. We should not profit on their misery, but we have an opportunity to connect with them and change their lives. To my mind, that is worth every byte of data.