
Teen Commits Suicide After Instagram Poll - digighoul
https://digit.fyi/teen-commits-suicide-after-instagram-poll/
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ben509
One thing I've noticed HN gets right is requiring a basic standard of
civility, and it seems like that idea gets lost in the discussion around
social media. It's understandable that Instagram et al want to get rid of hate
speech, but "the grind of you suck, you're lying, you're stupid"* is a problem
orders of magnitude larger because it encompasses users in general.

And, yeah, if you have an environment where it's normal to be civil and not
take cheap shots at people, "you should kill yourself" may not be entirely
prevented, but it would probably be unusual enough that she wouldn't have seen
70% of her peers telling her that.

* quoting Anita Sarkeesian from memory

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qntty
If I saw this poll I would assume it was a joke. Does the law have no
understanding of irony? Serious question for those who might know (I know this
is Malaysia so things are different).

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neilv
Children are still figuring things out, and are extremely sensitive to
feedback from peers. I wouldn't assume this was a joke, and, even if it was
(or a ploy for attention, or playing with being dramatic, or whatever),
negative peer feedback could turn it serious.

Also, it's not like certain social media companies don't know this about
children, and they've published research on exploiting that for their own
manipulative purposes.

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qntty
Right, but presumably the people voting on this poll are kids too, so it's
hard for them to bring the same attitude to the situation.

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xiphias2
Is there any reason why answering to a question through a social network would
be considered differently than if they were saying the same thing personally
in a group?

I'm sad for the commenter that wrote that he considers it as a joke: I make
sure whenever I read or hear about somebody being in depression I take it
seriously.

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rdiddly
The statements from IG execs are pretty robotic, aren't they.

Safe and Supported (tm)

Thoughts and Prayers (tm)

If I were writing or talking with care and attention specifically about this
incident (as opposed to regurgitating a talking point/slogan) I _might_ use
the word supported, as in "we want our users to feel supported." (Better, I
might actually eschew the weak and sniveling passive voice and say "we want to
support our users" or even better yet, "we support our users." But obviously
it's hard to be that direct and simple when you also _exploit_ users.) Anyway,
I would probably not spontaneously say "safe and supported," since she herself
was the one who rejected safety. Even if (long shot) I decided to include the
tangential idea of safety, I might say "supported and safe."

So yeah, to me, the phrase was jarring enough the first time I read it, but
then a different person says the exact same phrase? It's like an assembly
line. This poor girl is being treated as a "case" and callously lumped in with
who-knows what other "cases" that fall under what's starting to sound like a
branded initiative.

"Thank you for your inquiry regarding

    
    
      girl commits suicide after Instagram poll
    

Our thoughts and prayers and so on. Press 1 for the Safe and Supported team."

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ben509
In fairness, if I were an IG exec and this horrified me and I couldn't sleep
and was digging into it and demanding answers from my people and all that
drama...

I'd still give a safe, bland quote to the press.

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rdiddly
Maybe so. It just seems sometimes like humans have become too good at remaking
ourselves in the image of our machines.

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staticautomatic
Not to trivialize her tragic death but this is one hell of an object lesson in
letting a study run to completion before interpreting your data (if IG is to
be believed, I guess): "Police say, at the time of her death, 69% voted for
her to die. However, Instagram insists that the poll, which lasted 24-hours,
ended with 88% of her followers choosing ‘L’."

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swgdo
What's funny is that Instagram have to defend themselves from this nonsense.

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sverige
What's funny is denying that social media use by teenagers is more damaging to
their health than, say, smoking cigarettes.

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test6554
But less damaging than, say, keeping them socially isolated.

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larkeith
As the article touches on, this seems symptomatic of two larger-scale issues -
while the poll results almost certainly acted as a final straw, as it were, it
is hard to imagine the same circumstances arising without the Internet's
combination of dehumanization (due to pseudonymity) and echo/amplifying
effects; it is far more difficult to escape a negative headspace when even on
the best days you are subject to a barrage of topics you looked up on the
worst - even if the topics themselves are mundane, mental associations are not
to be underestimated, and it's all too easy to slip backwards.

I don't know if it's possible to fix these in current social network designs -
even when linked to your actual identity, Facebook has shown a screen can
still be barrier enough to encourage all sorts of awful, while the trend in
tracking and topic repetition (echochamber) has only been increasing.

I hope we figure it out before the Internet gets too evil.

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kohtatsu
>Police say, at the time of her death, 69% voted for her to die. However,
Instagram insists that the poll, which lasted 24-hours, ended with 88% of her
followers choosing ‘L’.

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tzakrajs
I don't see the context that explains that D = death and L = life. Maybe D
could have stood for Dark and L for Light?

