For the sake of transparency and due to the partisan nature of VICE, which is known to take people out of context to weave a narrative, I will be publishing my responses to quotes from researchers and academics about our community. This is a response to quotes in an article that will be published on VICE sometime next week but won't include the site name directly. It will have a direct focus on our community.
My responses are below:
First off, I'm sorry for your loss and that it has happened under these circumstances.
I do want to explain to you how many people on our forum are actually helped by its existence. People that are in a bad place usually come to our forums to either seek help or to seek a method. In our main resources thread, we list numbers to suicide hotlines as well as links to method guides made by other members. There have been countless people, including myself, that have been on the brink of suicide and have been immensely helped by talking to people on the forum. We have a Recovery section for people that wish to take that path and there are resources there to help them do that, too. For me and many others, knowing that there is a way out is sometimes enough to keep pushing through life.
I'm also sorry for your loss.
Our forum operates within the confines of the law and we follow it to the letter. We do not assist or encourage suicide. People are responsible for their own actions at the end of the day and there's not much we can do about that. The information that is listed on our website is posted by users and we have a clear ruleset that actively discourages breaking international, local, or the member's country of origin laws. We can't prevent how people will react to the information given to them or control how people will respond to users. We can only act within the confines of our rules. Liability ultimately falls to the individual that makes the post.
You can continue fighting to shut us down and shut us up, but we will prevail at the end of the day as we have broken no laws.
A biased opinion from a biased researcher that obviously can't see the other side of the coin. We believe that our users have the right to vent and yes, that even includes allowing people to talk about the things that society considers taboo like self-harm. An always-positive environment would actually be harmful to many of our members as it wouldn't allow them to express their true feelings. We are giving these users the space to be able to freely express themselves anonymously and I believe that it is a good thing. When you're in my position as a co-founder of this community, you will actually see what the mental health professionals get wrong. They are wrapped up in legal red tape and have to follow their protocols such as involuntary commitment, which doesn't work. We ultimately believe that a person does have a right to die as much as they have a right to live. Our community supports either choice. Many people advocate for women to be able to make that choice for their unborn baby, why can't it be the same for your own life?
To conclude that this approach is actively harmful and evil is to come to a conclusion that is driven by emotion and not by rational thought and data. Many people have chosen to live after coming to our website, but you don't see that side of the coin though all of the propaganda and the bad stuff. Our recovery board is testament to that fact. Not all people that seek out methods will go through with it, but we still believe that people should have access to that information. If that information wasn't on our forum, they'll just find it elsewhere on the internet. The information that is listed on the site can be found easily on many other websites.
That's incorrect. There has been little encouragement of suicide on the website. What you may have seen is people supporting and respecting the decision that the person has ultimately decided to make. Our rules are very clear when it comes to encouraging suicide or any other illegal activity for that matter. Sanctioned Suicide was a community on Reddit before it became a website. Reddit didn't allow methods to be posted, but that was it. Our goal with this website is to make sure people can make their own informed choices about their lives and to make sure that they can get support and help they need while being able to access whatever information they needed. They also know that they'll be supported no matter what decision they made. No encouragement or weasel words like "element" or "normalization" are at play here. Judging by this response, it seems like the suicide "researchers" has lots of work to do in trying to better understand why people seek out these resources instead of being ideological mouthpieces for those that are seeking to shut us down. This is not helpful dialogue, to say the least, and it really shows. The current approach to mental health is NOT working, and speaking to any of our members and their experiences with the medical system shows this.
The forum is open and free as it claims, but proselytizing has always been something that has been prohibited. Trying to "convert" someone over to your opinion is not allowed because just as we don't want people encouraging suicide, we don't want people trying to "save" people either. All we can do is provide information and not try to sway a person to one side or another, but to let them do their own research and to let them make that choice for themselves. We have to have a basic set of rules to prevent trolls and predators from taking advantage of the people on our forums, some of which are in a weak and vulnerable place.
Our community is a pro-choice community in every sense of the word. We ultimately lay out that information and allow the user to be able to choose what they do with it.
My responses are below:
First off, I'm sorry for your loss and that it has happened under these circumstances.
I do want to explain to you how many people on our forum are actually helped by its existence. People that are in a bad place usually come to our forums to either seek help or to seek a method. In our main resources thread, we list numbers to suicide hotlines as well as links to method guides made by other members. There have been countless people, including myself, that have been on the brink of suicide and have been immensely helped by talking to people on the forum. We have a Recovery section for people that wish to take that path and there are resources there to help them do that, too. For me and many others, knowing that there is a way out is sometimes enough to keep pushing through life.
I'm also sorry for your loss.
Our forum operates within the confines of the law and we follow it to the letter. We do not assist or encourage suicide. People are responsible for their own actions at the end of the day and there's not much we can do about that. The information that is listed on our website is posted by users and we have a clear ruleset that actively discourages breaking international, local, or the member's country of origin laws. We can't prevent how people will react to the information given to them or control how people will respond to users. We can only act within the confines of our rules. Liability ultimately falls to the individual that makes the post.
You can continue fighting to shut us down and shut us up, but we will prevail at the end of the day as we have broken no laws.
A biased opinion from a biased researcher that obviously can't see the other side of the coin. We believe that our users have the right to vent and yes, that even includes allowing people to talk about the things that society considers taboo like self-harm. An always-positive environment would actually be harmful to many of our members as it wouldn't allow them to express their true feelings. We are giving these users the space to be able to freely express themselves anonymously and I believe that it is a good thing. When you're in my position as a co-founder of this community, you will actually see what the mental health professionals get wrong. They are wrapped up in legal red tape and have to follow their protocols such as involuntary commitment, which doesn't work. We ultimately believe that a person does have a right to die as much as they have a right to live. Our community supports either choice. Many people advocate for women to be able to make that choice for their unborn baby, why can't it be the same for your own life?
To conclude that this approach is actively harmful and evil is to come to a conclusion that is driven by emotion and not by rational thought and data. Many people have chosen to live after coming to our website, but you don't see that side of the coin though all of the propaganda and the bad stuff. Our recovery board is testament to that fact. Not all people that seek out methods will go through with it, but we still believe that people should have access to that information. If that information wasn't on our forum, they'll just find it elsewhere on the internet. The information that is listed on the site can be found easily on many other websites.
That's incorrect. There has been little encouragement of suicide on the website. What you may have seen is people supporting and respecting the decision that the person has ultimately decided to make. Our rules are very clear when it comes to encouraging suicide or any other illegal activity for that matter. Sanctioned Suicide was a community on Reddit before it became a website. Reddit didn't allow methods to be posted, but that was it. Our goal with this website is to make sure people can make their own informed choices about their lives and to make sure that they can get support and help they need while being able to access whatever information they needed. They also know that they'll be supported no matter what decision they made. No encouragement or weasel words like "element" or "normalization" are at play here. Judging by this response, it seems like the suicide "researchers" has lots of work to do in trying to better understand why people seek out these resources instead of being ideological mouthpieces for those that are seeking to shut us down. This is not helpful dialogue, to say the least, and it really shows. The current approach to mental health is NOT working, and speaking to any of our members and their experiences with the medical system shows this.
The forum is open and free as it claims, but proselytizing has always been something that has been prohibited. Trying to "convert" someone over to your opinion is not allowed because just as we don't want people encouraging suicide, we don't want people trying to "save" people either. All we can do is provide information and not try to sway a person to one side or another, but to let them do their own research and to let them make that choice for themselves. We have to have a basic set of rules to prevent trolls and predators from taking advantage of the people on our forums, some of which are in a weak and vulnerable place.
Our community is a pro-choice community in every sense of the word. We ultimately lay out that information and allow the user to be able to choose what they do with it.
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