people feel lonely as fuck right now, and frankly i'd rather have people soothe it with an ai chatbot they parasocially love than as road rage or being a dick to the restaurant staff or many of the worse and more fatal outlets...
I'd rather people didn't kill themselves, personally.
well then you need both sides of the picture.
Is there a degree of loneliness staved off by these services? Does that help to reduce suicides?
It's easy to say "people killed themselves because X shutdown", it's more difficult to say "X existing is preventing suicides" without more research.
I tend to believe that if people who would consider suicide otherwise are distracted by something along the path then perhaps that is a good thing. It could very well be that this served as a distraction for those folks, rather than being the cause itself.
Like so many people on HN, they want to throw technological solutions at social problems.