Bonum Certa Men Certa

Crisis Text Line, a “Charity” Backed by Melinda Gates and Steve Ballmer, Collects Data From Suicidal People, Then Sells it to Advertisers and Other Third Parties

Guest post by Ryan, reprinted with permission from the original

Crisis Text Line, a “charity” backed by Melinda Gates and Steve Ballmer, collects data from suicidal people, then sells it to advertisers, a customer relations software company, and other third parties.



The outfit claims that the “AI” chat data is “anonymized”, but similar datasets have been trivially de-anonymized in the past.



Even if the dataset has been stripped, allowing them to sell the contents to advertisers is clearly unethical.



Worse, they apparently encourage users to use the system over Facebook Chat, which is monitored by Facebook, which is world-renowned for the creepy, unethical, and illegal things it does to invade privacy. They’ve settled or been convicted of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act at least a couple of times, for example.



Imagine what a goldmine all of this stuff that people unwisely tell it while they’re depressed is worth.



Even the more official National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the United States acts unethically at times. For example, if a person definitely plans to kill themselves, they will attempt to dox that person and call the police.



If you’re reading this in a civilized country, you may go “Oh, well, what’s the harm in that?”.



"Even the more official National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the United States acts unethically at times. For example, if a person definitely plans to kill themselves, they will attempt to dox that person and call the police."Well, the police in America are not exactly famous for treating mentally-ill people well when they arrive on the scene*, as was the case in Michigan when they arrived and shot an unarmed man whose mother had called them for a wellness check.



*(I know. Someone called them for a “check” on me a long time ago and far from trying to do anything to calm or reassure me, they came out, screamed at me, and accused me of malingering and feeling sorry for myself. Shouting at people and trying to throw them off balance might make sense when they’re a suspect in a murder, but it’s ridiculous that the cops are allowed to do this during a wellness check, when a person has harmed nobody.)



And even if you survive the police encounter, they can stuff you in a nuthatch, force you to take barbaric and primitive psychotropic medication, and then give you the boot later on, perhaps after you’ve lost your job for failing to appear at work, and now you are indebted to the treatment center for roughly $20,000.



Ironically, they may have given you more reasons to kill yourself than you had before you called the hotline.



I can only surmise based on what I’ve witnessed here that the United States doesn’t really want to do anything about the growing problem of suicide, which does need to be talked about. It says it does, but it doesn’t.



It allows the 100 richest people to hoard trillions in (largely inherited or as the windfall of various white collar crime) wealth, but it won’t do anything to alleviate poverty.



Instead, we get this 9-8-8 number that just sounds like it could turn your life into even more of a shitshow than the reason you called it for, and the 1% (Including Bill Gates’s ex-wife Melinda, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer) running a competing disservice that sucks up your data, packages it, and sells it, so that advertisers know what makes people tick.



It makes me wonder, if they’re allowed to sell it, who else they would be selling it to.



"Could it be that not too long from now, the Crisis Text Line and Facebook will offer to tell them everything people have typed into this?"There are already companies that copy out all of your Twitter and Facebook posts, likes, and shares, and go combing through it for “red flags”, and then sending it to your employer or potential employer.



Could it be that not too long from now, the Crisis Text Line and Facebook will offer to tell them everything people have typed into this?



It really should stop and give you pause about how you should not interact with things like this. If there wasn’t some way to profit off of this human suffering, the billionaire class wouldn’t be investing in it.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
 
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025