he did not die by suicide, he killed himself. The humane thing to do is at least to acknowledge the agency of his final act
"Die by suicide" is preferable to "commit suicide" or "killed themselves" because it shifts the cause from the person to the circumstances that led to the act. In many cases, suicide is not intentional, but is brought upon by (mental illness / other circumstances) in which the person sees suicide as the only way out. Therefore, "kill themselves" implies they willingly choose suicide and is responsible for it, as opposed to "die by suicide", which implies the person is a victim.
This article provides a good overview on why this is the case, and I resonate to it a lot: https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-mental-health-advo...
For pedantic readers, it's not clear in this case if the person chose suicide by themselves, or were driven to it. Regardless, I'd still err on the caution side.
It's as if instead of saying "John walked to the park", the editor wrote "John was moved to the park by walking".
And I also find asinine the idea of stripping the sense of agency in someone's last moment, as if it were more respectful. Suicide is a sad, touchy subject no matter how the sentence is constructed anyway.
Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker.
Subjectively, I can’t speak for OP but personally I find this a difficult one. I think for many people, suicide is an illness. However, there’s also something that in Dutch we call “completed life”. The idea that you feel like your life is complete and continuing to live doesn’t interest you. This is often used in the context of people who are chronically ill or the elderly. Referring to those people as “dying of suicide” also isn’t correct, but in these cases I doubt it will reach mainstream media.
Objectively - no idea
Subjectively - a friend of mine killed himself ten days ago. It's a tragedy, I wish he hadn't done it but he did. It matters to me because I think this idea he was passively subjected to suicide is plainly wrong.
This is just another case of tech people parachuting into another area and asserting their intuited objective truth instead of asking why something is the way it is.