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

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and "Linux" Articles by Bots
Sites that do this won't survive; many of them rely on slop services (suppliers) that will cease to exist after the bubble bursts
Distinguished Lecture by Richard Stallman This Coming Monday in Rome
After "Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World"
Links 10/10/2025: Putin Admits Russia Downed Azerbaijan Airlines Jet, More New Heat Records
Links for the day
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually