Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

checkupapp.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 49 posts

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#21

Post by rkirkendall »

matart wrote: post #16

How accurate do you think this can be? What happens if I write a facebook update that says, as an example: I don't believe I have ever said "I feel depressed" Would this be flagged? Does it only take one post to be flagged or is it looking for recurring behaviour?

Good question. Part of the ongoing nature of this project is to expand our phrase detections. I pulled the original phrase list from a white paper written by BYU last year because I figured that would be a good starting point. There is room for vast improvement though.

If the last few posts leading up to the flagged post are classified as predominately negative (currently looking at the last 3 tweets before the flagged tweet), then we send the notification. The intuition is that if a person is comfortable enough with social to post seriously suicidal content, he or she has probably already made some preceding negative remarks.

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#22

Post by fmdud »

wyager wrote: post #7

This seems a little accidentally sinister to me... Something about doing automatic sentiment analysis on someone's data without their permission seems morally questionable. I mean, almost none of us are happy when the government does it, even though it's allegedly with the (very questionably) "good" intention of "fighting (terrorism|drugs|bogeymen)".

It's different when it's public data, though - it's data willingly shared.

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#23

Post by fmdud »

phfez wrote: post #11
4lgorythm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a "depressed" person is posting things that flag a SUICIDE watch app, then I'd say they are obviously posting those things to draw attention to their issues. Therefore someone noticing would probably be just what they want.

Exactly, which would make this app unnecessary.

Twitter feeds move pretty fast. People might not notice a cry for help until it's too late.

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#24

Post by bussiere »

hum, interesting.

Kind of minority report here.

Machine learning on depression syndrome ?

I'am a hacker and not truly white, are you not afraid that people used this to take advantage of depressed people ?

A man can use this to spot depressed women , some are manipulator born people.

I find the project interesting but it have a lot of ethic problems. I think that it will be more a tools for the people in wealth.

maybe it could be more interesting to have the global mood of people than the mood of one people.

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#25

Post by [deleted] »

bussiere wrote: post #24

hum, interesting. Kind of minority report here. Machine learning on depression syndrome ? I'am a hacker and not truly white, are you not afraid that people used this to take advantage of depressed people ? A man can use this to spot depressed women , some are manipulator born people. I find the project interesting but it have a lot of ethic problems. I think that it will be more a tools for the people in wealth. mayb…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#27

Post by mkal_tsr »

blowski wrote: post #20
phfez wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it would be wonderful because of the way that you felt, not the way your friend felt. And there is no algorithm that can detect suicidal feelings. I can't help but think of Alan Turing in this scenario.

> And there is no algorithm that can detect suicidal feelings. I get what you're saying, but given the miracles that do exist in modern medicine, I'm not prepared to say it's impossible. I suspect better availability of mental healthcare, preferring counselling over drugs, and less stigmatising would all be better 'solutions' than an algorithm, but if an algorithm did exist that could genuinely help then it would be…

You did not address the first part of his comment,

> You think it would be wonderful because of the way that you felt, not the way your friend felt.

Why not?

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#28

Post by jwise0 »

conistonwater wrote: post #26

Have you thought at all about the ethics of meddling in people's lives? [1] This "service" seems contrary to basic notions of privacy and freedom. [1] http://www.davidhume.org/texts/suis.html

The only thing the service does is alert the friends of someone who appears to be about to end their own life, but who, for some reason, is posting about it on a public forum.

I can assure you that the service does no meddling whatsoever.

Someone who is swept by the depths of depression, and takes a last moment to emerge long enough to ask their friends for help -- well, I think that it is only fair to counterbalance the feed algorithms that try to keep the rest of us blissfully ignorant, and let them have the support that they ask for.

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#29

Post by jwise0 »

Ricky,

Thanks for this service.

Sometimes, all it takes is to remind someone that people are there for them, and care about them. I don't terribly like Twitter, but I try to read it once a day or so just to keep a view on how people are doing; this service would be incredibly useful to me to make sure that I don't have things that I'd like to pay attention to falling through the cracks.

I know a bunch of people here seem to wish that the service were less aggressive (or that it didn't exist at all): for my application, I'd almost prefer it be more aggressive! Three negative sentiments is a high bar to meet, and I fear the false negative rate could be quite high.

Anyway, thanks very much for writing this. As a whole, classes of applications that help me mediate my interaction with social networks are things that I support, and in specific, this application is incredibly valuable to me.

Re: Show HN: CheckUp – Social network suicide prevention in Go

#30

Post by [deleted] »

jwise0 wrote: post #28
conistonwater wrote: post #26

Have you thought at all about the ethics of meddling in people's lives? [1] This "service" seems contrary to basic notions of privacy and freedom. [1] http://www.davidhume.org/texts/suis.html

The only thing the service does is alert the friends of someone who appears to be about to end their own life, but who, for some reason, is posting about it on a public forum. I can assure you that the service does no meddling whatsoever. Someone who is swept by the depths of depression, and takes a last moment to emerge long enough to ask their friends for help -- well, I think that it is only fair to counterbalance…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN