First of all, I was able to access the forum from an Italian proxy server. Make of that what you will.
Now, I don't know. Either these articles are another example of lazy and bad journalism or they're outright malicious. Honestly, I think it's the latter. Like, there are no minors in this forum. That's simply a lie, didn't they do their research? No because if they did they would have known that we ban them on sight, end of discussion. And you know, maybe I'm crazy but shouldn't parents look after their children and, I don't know, do something that's called parenting in almost every modern and civilized country - instead of going after a community that's clearly made for adults? Is that a controversial take? I don't know but why is it our job to take care of their children? It's their job to monitor the activity of their children in the internet, why do they blame us? In all honesty, parents should actually thank us for doing their job for them but(!) you know what? Just because we ban them doesn't mean they'll stop roaming the internet freely. The internet contains plenty of harmful content and the best way to protect your children is to look after them. I know, nobody could have seen that coming, being an actual parent, yikes. I have weird ideas, right?
And I really don't see why we're constantly to blame when we make it very clear from the start that this is a community for autonomous and consenting adults that wants to exercise their most basic human rights. Why is that left out in that article? Why aren't we allowed to do that? Does the idea that people have a right to engage in discussions about their daily existential pain and suffering and exchange information regarding their right to die make you (as journalists) uncomfortable? Maybe you should question your priorities then but whatever you tried to achieve with these articles - one thing is clear, they're garbage. This forum addresses very fundamental question about basic human rights - rights, which by the way are ignored in almost every country on this planet. Relief from pain? How dare you, what a weird concept, am I right? Ask yourself, does creating these bad-faith articles about us help one single individual on this planet? And why didn't you go through some of the threads on this platform and read and learn about the reasons on why people are members of this forum in the first place? You have all the answers here, in thousands of threads. 17'000 members explained to you why they're here. What's causing their pain, their suffering, what's turning their life into a living nightmare, what's driving them to the edge. Why we're here. Why we need the forum. Why some of us consider their right to die. It's all there, yet you chose to ignore it and instead, just smear us, every single person that's a member in this forum. This forum is one of the best resources to actually reduce suicide because it contains thousands of anecdotal stories about their suffering and their reasons why they're considering their right to die - you didn't address this with one single word! You failed. You could have done something positive with all the information that's out there but you chose to do some lazy smear piece instead. As someone who is actually interested in reducing suffering, I'm disgusted. But you don't get.
Their strategy is so obvious and I'm gonna explain it to you.
They know they can't win against us with the "autonomous adults considering their right to die"-angle, so they go for the "weak-minded minors getting sucked into suicide"-angle. That's why they keep making up stories about minors using this website and they'll keep riding that boat until it sinks. I'll make a bold statement here: 99.9999999~% of the members in this forum are adults that have the mental capacity to make deeply personal decisions regarding their life and death (- none of your business by the way). But the goal of this exercise, all these articles that came out the last few months, the attempt to go after us politically, is taking away control from adults. That's it. It was never about children, they just don't like that you have control over your own exit. They don't like that we talk freely about sensitive, taboo subjects. This whole article couldn't be further from the truth but congrats to these journalists for - obviously - smearing this website in another bad-faith attempt to make us look bad. Why? Because the idea that the right to die has legitimate reasons to exist as a movement makes them feel uncomfortable. I hope you're proud, attacking a community of suicidal adults and reducing all of us, 17'000 people, to minors. You're erasing very important voices that need to be heard. Thanks for your contribution.