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Comment by joja | Hacker News Reader

Protip: This is not Justin.TV's fault.

This is no ones fault but the adult's (he was over 18). It really is that simple - though you wouldn't know it from the media.

America: where self-entitlement lives on and accountability goes to die.

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This seems like the last Seinfeld episode, where they were arrested under a Good Samaritan law for observing a crime but doing nothing to help the victim. If the account in this article is accurate, there were people watching the video feed for "hours" after he took the pills before calling the police. He might be alive if someone called earlier.

A similar thing happened in the Joel on Software Offtopic forum. Idiosyncratic, self described AI researcher Chris McKinstry kept talking about suicide, was mocked, then eventually took some pills and started a thread describing his final time on Earth in periodic posts. No video, and he didn't say where he was, but some people in the thread got close to tracking him down but not in time.

(I used to contribute there, but had stopped before this happened. I found out about it later and dug up the transcript in the archives when I read about it in Wired:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimyst...

"He posted the message on his blog and a slightly different version on a forum at Joel on Software, a popular geek hangout.")

If you call the cops every time someone on the net says they're going to do something harmful to themselves or another, law enforcement would never get anything useful done.

While I can't imagine egging someone on in that case, it's not our collective responsibility to prevent strangers from harming themselves.

That is true, but regardless, egging someone on who appears to be on the edge of suicide is simply inhuman.

Are you saying androids did this?

Stuff like this is bound to happen on a live broadcast site. There's six billion people out there. Every conceivable behavior will be broadcast.

I think before one can make comments like that you need ot have the FULL story.

Unless people here are parto f the community and new the guy (it seems he cried wolf several times) you cant really pass judgement on what was said (except in some of the cases...).

I also see (in the threads cache) people telling him it was a bad idea. I really doubt he was listening to any of them anyway....

Although the events were pretty horrific (if you've read the original bodybuilding thread - now removed), it is worth keeping in mind that this particular individual had attempted this several other times in the same community. After the first many times, it appeared to almost be a running joke- until, of course, it wasn't.

I do agree with the overall theme of your post but its not a "wash your hands of it and move on" situation.

The fact is we're in such a rush to launch our websites and start being businessmen who actually talks this kind of thing through? Who's asking themselves how best to moderate comments and chat as they scale to protect children. What's your response to someone posting obscene or inappropriate content? and how quick do you act?

There's definitely an inherent danger here, often we build and engineer so quickly and cheaply that we sacrifice having the kind of staff numbers we need to live up to our ethical responsibilities.

All the best to the guys at justin.tv and anyone involved, I'm not judging you for your statement sure you have the best intentions.

Just because justin.tv may not have been at fault doesn't mean that they won't share in the blame.

Like most things in life, it's not so cut and dry.

I don't have the answers, but some would argue that by providing the forum and doing nothing - or not enough - to curtail the activities of the people on that forum, there is an element of fault with justin.tv.

If someone hangs themselves from the tree in my front yard, is there an element of fault with me for supplying the tree?

Any effort to shift blame onto j.tv for this is little more than an over-reaction caused by a state of grief...while it is certainly understandable, it is equally indefensible.

Well, if you sit and watch them tying the noose and climb the tree, there is (or certainly can be argued) an element of fault that yes.

But we're not talking about some tiny community where everyone can be watching for this sort of thing from everyone else. What we're talking about is approximately the moral equivalent of blaming the mayor of New York for someone hanging themselves in Central Park.

But we're not talking about some tiny community where everyone can be watching for this sort of thing from everyone else.

Well I know, but a lawyer can easily argue that community website operators have a duty to monitor their community for suicides the same way that they monitor for all sorts of other things. (I'm sure if I posted a racist rant it would be dealt with harshly.)

What we're talking about is approximately the moral equivalent of blaming the mayor of New York for someone hanging themselves in Central Park.

I tend to agree with you, but you should also realize that many cities have invested a great deal of money in anti-suicide devices - precisely because they recognize that they could be held liable, and because it's just a nice thing to do.

I'm playing devil's advocate here, so don't take this as my particular viewpoint.

Community website operators do have a duty to monitor for suicides to some extent, just as they have a duty to monitor for other things. But failure to meet perfection in the pursuit of a virtue is not morally the same as a vice. Online communities have moderators in much the same way as real communities have police--they're society's protection against something going wrong with the social contract. When they individually fail, they may (individually or collectively) bear some level of moral responsibility for the matter, but the buck stops there. The only way moral responsibility can find its way to the top is if it is clear that the community in vastly under-equipped to deal with such problems to begin with, and there is an expectation that such things will be actively prevented within the social contract. When a murder or suicide takes place in a physical town, neither the city (as a political unit) nor the mayor is personally morally responsible; a virtual town is no different.

I understand that you aren't necessarily saying that you entirely believe the views you're espousing; any debate in a public forum should be as much (if not more so) of a benefit for the observers as it is for the participants. Clearly stating both sides of an argument helps everyone involved understand the precise nature of the issue.

Yeah, it's like trying to ban guns because of the Columbine shooting. That sure helped the students at VT.

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