This seems to clearly be a case of a person who succumbed to pre-existing mental health troubles, not someone driven to desperation by (the appearance of) financial troubles. That said, Robinhood is evil. > shower of colorful confetti Robinhood routinely deploys after customers make trades.
Why do you say Robinhood is evil? It's a platform. It does not make decisions for you. Heck,it does not even give you recommendations. Even the greatest tools in the wrong hands can lead to harm but can you blame the tool? You don't blame the knife when you cut yourself.
Robinhood intentionally attempts to make financial transactions fun and desirable to the user. This is to drive more trade volume on their platform. The app is leveraging psychology to make users more active on the platform, which may not necessarily be in the user's longterm financial interest. If your financial app uses the same gamification tricks as a slot machine, that's a problem.
This person was 20 years old -- their brain isn't even fully developed yet. No responsible company would allow a 20-year-olds to dig themselves into a $700,000+ hole. That's a lifetime of debt for all but the highest income earners. Even banks, for all their issues, wouldn't allow that.
Yes, the person was legally an adult and make their own decisions. But no responsible company would facilitate a chain of decisions that would lead to $700,000 in debt. If only for self preservation, because the dead can't pay off that debt to the company.
But hey, Robinhood is playing with fake VC money so whatever... right? What's a couple of bodies when Robinhood is a disruptor and makes complex financial transactions fuuuuuuuuuun. Party on!