Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent • Hacker News Board

Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent

#191

Post by wat10000 » Wed, May 13, 2026, 10:56 PM UTC

hirvi74 wrote: post #183

wat10000 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they accounting for the fact that people who are admitted with suicidal thoughts will tend to be those much more prone to suicide in the first place? It seems obvious, but it doesn't sound like they are. People who come home from the hospital after being admitted for cancer treatment will have a much higher cancer death rate than the general population, but that doesn't imply that hospital treatment is damaging.

> Are they accounting for the fact that people who are admitted with suicidal thoughts will tend to be those much more prone to suicide in the first place? How certain are you that this is a fact? I agree that is seems like common sense on the surface, but that might not be the case. The closest I could find in the study was this: > However, the findings should curb enthusiasm for restrictive interventions directed a…

I'm quite confident that people admitted to institutions for suicidal thoughts are much more prone to suicide.

But it doesn't actually matter to my point. It's a very reasonable hypothesis, true or not. It needs to be addressed as a potential confounding factor, either by showing it's not true, or by showing that the size of the observed effect is greater than the effect from the confounding factor.

Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent

#192

Post by mothballed » Wed, May 13, 2026, 11:19 PM UTC

hx8 wrote: post #184

randerson wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the help they need is just to talk to someone without fear of consequences? If they dispatch you to an institution you could lose your job just when you need money to pay for the bills you'll be sent. With some careers, like being a pilot, you'd never be be to find another job. You'd lose your ability to take out life insurance (even if it was a short temporary depression that you got over, like a side effect…

> What if the help they need is just to talk to someone without fear of consequences? Is there actually any consequence free conversations? Even Lawyers can break confidentiality in some situations. I'm not saying that the hotline is perfect, I'm saying that it provides a lot of good. I hope you never feel the need to call the hotline, but it's an option that saves a lot of lives.

I think that's what strippers are for. Come in, pay in cash, say whatever, no paper trail or telephone logs, then leave. They're not mandatory reporters like doctors or licensed professionals and therapists are. From the ones I've known, this is no-shit what a lot of people use them for.

Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent

#193

Post by basisword » Thu, May 14, 2026, 12:53 PM UTC

edwinjm wrote: post #163

basisword wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more incompetence than malice. It's just such a standard thing for engineers to throw analytics tracking in every website/product they build. Although I am surprised not one person realised this might be a bad idea given the sensitive nature of the site.

In Europe, it’s not (and should not be) a “standard” thing.

It shouldn't be but it is. Otherwise we'd find most European sites don't have consent popups. In reality we have tonnes, many now requiring payment if you want to reject trackers.

Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent

#194

Post by gitaarik » Fri, May 15, 2026, 10:23 AM UTC

timcobb wrote: post #32

It's telling, IMO, that Western cultures deals with suicidality with hotlines you can call. It's like some joke from gonzo journalism come to fruition. I don't know what the answer is, but as a person who's been suicidal, for me it wasn't a hotline. It's even more fitting, if not kind of perfect, that said hotlines farm your data and sell it. :chef's kiss: what else is there to say. Like just about everything else, c…

This is meant for people that are socially isolated, and don't have anyone to talk to about their personal issues and challenges. It's of course not great that it supposedly has a need to exists. But the fact that it is there to provide help to people that can't get it anywhere else, is a good thing I would think.

Edit: Apart from that, the people that are running it are probably not technically skilled or aware, so privacy issues like this should be highlighted.

Re: Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent

#195

Post by chaosharmonic » Sat, May 16, 2026, 1:30 AM UTC

hirvi74 wrote: post #186

sailfast wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth is the "industrial complex" part about this? Outside of pharma pushing pills I'm not sure what other profit-seeking, recursive elements exist in the "suicide prevention industry". Legitimately curious about this - not sure how these words would apply.

Not entirely sure what the GP meant either, but maybe it's like sports betting? Where some companies are heavily advertising and trying to get people to become "responsible gamblers" (addicted), meanwhile, some of those same companies are investing in mental health treatment facilities on the side. Thus, those gambling companies can make money off gambling addicts and when gambling addicts try to quit. As the saying…

Um. I don't have the link directly in front of me, but the tl;dr of the OP's point (that I was referencing/quoting in the above comment) was that, in the US, our efforts around suicide prevention are last resort options, that we offer instead of actually fixing any of the things that make people here suicidal. We gut mental health resources, and fuck people over in pretty much every other critical, material way -- healthcare and otherwise... But meanwhile we make a big deal about how we have a hotline, and how the number is even easy to remember now.

It's sort of like how we give enormous amounts of money to cops (institutionally), instead of funding the safety nets that actually reduce crime. Actually (edit), those analogies are kind of related, because the same safety nets are important for driving down both of these things. Yk, because people are more stable in other ways when they aren't in desperation all the time.

You might say it's the difference between emergency services and emergency prevention.

Edit: I did eventually find the source. https://linkedin.com/posts/tabitha-lean-5786011a3_nspc26-act...