Hacker News Reader

This is often called the Werther Effect. It may be interesting to look at the inverse as well: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18082110 i.e. a policy prohibiting publicizing suicides seems to correlate with a decrease in suicides.

View on HN

Fun Fact: active shooter incidents (often spree-killings, culminating in suicide, capital punshment or life in prison) are still sensationalized, despite an awareness of this general principle being readily acknowleged. Is the viewer response just too lucrative?

It’s more of a multi-party Prisoner’s Dilemma - there is no way to enforce an embargo, significant penalties to an “old school” news organization not sharing all the information that the hungry can’t-afford-to-be-ethical outfits will likely publish, and vice versa.

An industry organization or regulatory body that could enforce adding language encouraging sensitive viewers to seek counseling may be the only sustainable band-aid here.

Social media made it ultimately futile anyway. It's incredibly hard to coordinate every possible news outlet. Now try and coordinate every possible Twitter user in the area.

There are always tradeoffs. Do we favour free speech or are we ok with triggering an event that correlate with a temporary increase in suicides?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com