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Comment by Lightbody | Hacker News Reader

Yeah that’s super jaded. Seriously consider stepping back and thinking about how much grief the parents are going through.

I have a young child who has voiced suicidal thoughts and and it’s so fucking hard. The pandemic has been really rough on a lot of kids.

Thank god we are we’re finally able to get professional help (after almost a year of waiting for an available therapist).

You don’t know shit about the circumstances of these families, and jumping to the conclusion that the parents are at fault and not at least considering that a $1T company could lift a finger is kinda messed up.

Sorry for the angry tone but I’m seeing a few folks make comments like yours and it’s infuriating. This isn’t some joke topic and the Silicon Valley contrarian attitude really is frustrating to see on this thread.

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This isn’t a contrarian attitude, it’s a “parent your own children instead of insisting corporations parent all of us” attitude.

I feel for the parents’ grief. I also understand how difficult parenting a troubled teenager must be.

I also categorically reject the idea that Amazon is culpable, and I think that these particular parents, in their grief, are merely attempting to externalize their feelings of guilt.

They want to rage at something or someone other than themselves.

Asking Amazon to not bundle these product and instead put up a suicide hotline suggestion instead is not “insisting corporations parent all of us”. It’s insisting on basic decency.

And I *AM* parenting my children when I insist on this. The only thing I’m thinking about is if my kid goes to a dark place again and starts searching the internet.

But please: why don’t you tell me how to be better parent to prevent this?

> But please: why don’t you tell me how to be better parent to prevent this?

I’m not going to do that, just like you shouldn’t be trying to force the rest of us to pay the steep costs of assuaging your parenting fears.

Why not both? Parent your children + require sensible safeguards

Because it's not entirely their fault. Providing easy access to suicide is dangerous to people who suffer from mental illness, children or no. They may have well been seeking help for their children, but then along comes Amazon and sells them easy access to something they can use in a moment of psychosis to harm themselves.

Saying that Amazon is not culpable is like saying Amazon would not be culpable in an overdose death if they were selling heroin to children in withdrawal, because the parents should have been more careful. Sure, they should have, they can't discharge the blame. But the source of the substance is also culpable.

How did their children have unrestricted internet access, a credit card, an Amazon account, and the ability to place an order and have it shipped and delivered to their home without any form of parental review?

I’m not going to say it’s the parent’s fault, but they’re a hell of a lot more culpable than Amazon, which isn’t any more culpable than a hardware store selling rope.

Literally addressed in the case, which is part of the complaint.

~~~

The circumstances surrounding Amazon’s sales to both Kristine and Ethan were highly irregular. Amazon has a policy that people under the age of 18 can only use the service with the involvement of a parent or guardian. However, Kristine, at just sixteen, had created her own account to purchase the poisonous chemical and was never asked her age when she set up the account. The package delivered to Kristine’s home was addressed without a last name. It read only “Kristine.”

Seventeen-year-old Ethan used the account that belonged to his mother, Nikki, to purchase Sodium Nitrite. When Nikki received the email receipt for the purchase, she immediately called Amazon’s customer service to tell them there must have been some mistake and that nobody at her home had ordered the item. Amazon told Nikki the order was cancelled. Instead, the Sodium Nitrite was delivered to her home four days later.

> … created her own account to purchase the poisonous chemical

Everything is poisonous in excess. These are scare-words written by a lawyer looking for a big payout.

> … and was never asked her age when she set up the account.

She had to supply a credit card and agree to the terms of service.

Do you want Amazon to engage in privacy intrusive age verification? Maybe we should be forced to upload government ID?

Or maybe you should be responsible for parenting your own children, and not trying to parent the rest of us.

> The package delivered to Kristine’s home was addressed without a last name. It read only “Kristine.”

So?

> Instead, the Sodium Nitrite was delivered to her home four days later.

Yeah, that happens.

Guess what’s going to happen even more now?

All the irresponsible journalists driving social media panic are advertising sodium nitrate as an effective method of suicide to the world. People who never had heard of it or considered it are going to, now.

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