Discussion They have done a thesis talking about this forum

[Versailles]

Basically a student wrote a thesis about the forum. This is the link

https://thesis.unipd.it/bitstream/20.500.12608/42144/1/Sartori_Elisa.pdf

 

[LastFlowers]

Ah. I wonder in what light we are so generously portrayed..

Is it more of the same or is there something different and open-minded here?

Not sure I want to look without knowing.

 

[FuneralCry]

That sounds so incredibly tedious, like why would anyone wish to read that. And what really is the point of writing a thesis about this anyway, like some people just want to die, it's as simple as that and others should just get over it. Something like that is probably just someone really privileged trying to sound all intelligent, definitely sounds like something best avoided.

 

[spinningship]

There's some interesting graphs in there but maybe i'm just a nerd lol

 

[LastFlowers]

That sounds so incredibly tedious, like why would anyone wish to read that. And what really is the point of writing a thesis about this anyway, like some people just want to die, it's as simple as that and others should just get over it. Something like that is probably just someone really privileged trying to sound all intelligent, definitely sounds like something best avoided.

That would be my assumption as well, just wanted to leave a little room for it to be wrong..but you're probably right.

 

[Sunset Limited]

I am ready to be a volunteer subject for a maze with pentobarbital in the middle.

 

[GlassAlwaysEmpty]

I had a quick glance through just now.

Some of the data analysis stuff is pretty interesting. The average user apparently only stays on the site for 6 months.

 

[LastFlowers]

I am ready to be a volunteer subject for a maze with pentobarbital in the middle.

'Barbiturates for Algernon'

I had a quick glance through just now.

Some of the data analysis stuff is pretty interesting. The average use apparently only stays on the site for 6 months.

Never thought I'd be so disappointed for finally beating the bell curve..

 

[LookingOverTheEdge]

I read most of it. It's not really looking at whether or not the site is considered moral or dangerous. Though in the conclusion it does state that sites like this can be important in the fight for suicide prevention.

At the end of the day, places like this will get attention, most of it likely negative. Remember that how this site is perceived is up to us, the users. How we conduct ourselves and interact with each other.

 

[sizzlingfootnote]

That sounds so incredibly tedious, like why would anyone wish to read that. And what really is the point of writing a thesis about this anyway, like some people just want to die, it's as simple as that and others should just get over it. Something like that is probably just someone really privileged trying to sound all intelligent, definitely sounds like something best avoided.

the site itself offers up a wealth of information. I'm not participating in the data collection, jus saying. maybe it amounts to nothing, haven't finished the paper yet. it's like crying because zuckerberg has all this information about someone after they posted personal info on facebook day after day and suddenly Peter Thiel and his weirdos know all your shit.

don't pretend like this isn't the internet. some of us are catalogued back to the usenet days.

 

[LastFlowers]

the site itself offers up a wealth of information. I'm not participating in the data collection, jus saying. maybe it amounts to nothing, haven't finished the paper yet. it's like crying because zuckerberg has all this information about someone after they posted personal info on facebook day after day and suddenly Peter Thiel and his weirdos know all your shit.

don't pretend like this isn't the internet. some of us are catalogued back to the usenet days.

That's not exactly a fair comparison.
Most of us have nowhere else to go behind closed doors to solicit support and kindred sentiments concerning the subject of suicide and similar.
(FB itself changed its privacy protocol repeatedly and would retroactively help itself to your information under a far more frightening pretense than it had claimed to its users initially.)

Also some people's openness and what they have to be open about is just inevitably and uncontrollably more sensitive and rife with vulnerabilities..doesn't mean they shouldn't also have a voice.

Doesn't help that the "wealth of information" is always cherry picked and misinterpreted to the point that any possibility for a genuine or considerate take away might as well not exist.

 

[spinningship]

Analysing data from a site like this feels pretty cold to be honest. It's all human stories and people at their lowest and to try and put it all in to neat little ordered boxes just feels wrong.

 

[western_heart]

Not that interesting for me, I skimmed it while in the bath. A lot of content analysis that doesn't do much other than confirm that suicide is a popular topic here.

Main conclusion in the paper is that the authors believe this site is an echo chamber, and in trying to support this compare the forum to other social media like Facebook or Reddit (sites where a variety of things are posted about.) Which doesn't make sense to me. more interesting would be to compare this site to other independent forums - like, there are a LOT of places online where people create accounts just to ask a question or two and never come back, and where everyone generally found the site because they are already interested in a given topic. In that sense the majority of forums are echo chambers. No one is going to go on a Toyota forum and tell posters that they should have bought a bicycle instead of a car.

They say they don't believe that the site explicitly incites suicide, which is good, but are going to have humans read posts and judge whether they are persuasive.

If anyone involved in this paper sees this post, I do not consent to my content being used in research.

 

[ftbc]

I think exposure for a topic like suicide is usually going to be helpful. How will people be receptive to something progressive such as the idea of pro choice and assisted suicide if the conversation can not begin because it is so heavily stigmatized?

I also think that some sentiments within this thread feel as though this thesis is a breach of trust and humanity, which is certainly true because suicide can be a struggle and portray struggle. However, I think suicide can also be a neutral or even positive experience: a transition, an expression of a human, a consequence of environment and interactions, etc. Even for those who struggle endlessly, suicide does represent release and peace. I do not believe in heaven and hell or that suicide requires some sort of reconciliation post human life, so my perspective does not encapsulate those institutions and the corresponding consequences

 

[sizzlingfootnote]

That's not exactly a fair comparison.
Most of us have nowhere else to go behind closed doors to solicit support and kindred sentiments concerning the subject of suicide and similar.
(FB itself changed its privacy protocol repeatedly and would retroactively help itself to your information under a far more frightening pretense than it had claimed to its users initially.)

Also some people's openness and what they have to be open about is just inevitably and uncontrollably more sensitive and rife with vulnerabilities..doesn't mean they shouldn't also have a voice.

Doesn't help that the "wealth of information" is always cherry picked and misinterpreted to the point that any possibility for a genuine or considerate take away might as well not exist.

I didn't say I had an opinion on what was happening to the information. I can't help you control what happens to the information. I don't know how and I don't think it's possible. If you wanted to combat what happens to the "wealth of information", you might need to employ an army of trolls, which I will not support.

I support free speech and I am opposed to fascism and authoritarianism.

 

[LookingOverTheEdge]

Analysing data from a site like this feels pretty cold to be honest. It's all human stories and people at their lowest and to try and put it all in to neat little ordered boxes just feels wrong.

I totally understand that. I'm at least willing to allow that this study doesn't seem to be coming from a malicious place though, and that counts for something in my book.

This place has been a great comfort to me for some time now. It's the only place I feel I can speak freely without having to filter what I want and need to say. I would hate to lose it, but I'm all for it being seen and understood for what it means to people like me.

Look past the boogeyman of the site containing info for suicide methods, which anyone with internet access could find easily enough anywhere, and beneath that you find a place that's been more supportive to me than my countries mental health systems.

 

[theboy]

interesting

 

[Message In A Bottle]

The thought of us being used as a human research experiment is unsettling…

What am I? Subject number 306?

it's just not right considering the context. People use this space as a last resort to vent all their problems to - not for some big intellectual banking it's contents for their next paper to gloat about - presumedly for all eyes to see.

Disrespectful.

 

[LittleJem]

I find the term echo chamber irritating as it doesn't take into account how this is one of the few places outside of the dominant pro-life narrative. Which is always with platitudes and lies about recovery. Probably most of us have tried recovery, medication etc. I have had five miraculous days off suicidal thoughts thanks to LSD plus therapy (well kind friends) but basically I live on this forum as I am usually suffering all day every day. The fact that there is a recovery section which they ignored in the data analysis is also telling.

I think they did a good job on the analysis and it probably got a good mark, but in terms of usefulness for anyone suicidal or in alleviating suffering it has no use whatsoever. Just data wank basically. No offence to the person who wrote it. If this is 'Big Data' then I consider it useless. Give me qualitative research and human insight any day. Agree nice graphs!

 

[LastFlowers]

I find the term echo chamber irritating as it doesn't take into account how this is one of the few places outside of the dominant pro-life narrative. Which is always with platitudes and lies about recovery. Probably most of us have tried recovery, medication etc. I have had five miraculous days off suicidal thoughts thanks to LSD plus therapy (well kind friends) but basically I live on this forum as I am usually suffering all day every day. The fact that there is a recovery section which they ignored in the data analysis is also telling.

I think they did a good job on the analysis and it probably got a good mark, but in terms of usefulness for anyone suicidal or in alleviating suffering it has no use whatsoever. Just data wank basically. No offence to the person who wrote it. If this is 'Big Data' then I consider it useless. Give me qualitative research and human insight any day. Agree nice graphs!

I agree.

As I've said before, the term "echo chamber" has become pretty much meaningless.
You could call any space, any group, any relationship with more than one person (or maybe even your own solitary mind) an "echo chamber" and be accurate in doing so, while also missing the point.
The main reason most of us came here was to escape an "echo chamber" with the opposite narrative and restrictions/regulations on what could or could not be spoken about, thought about and expressed etc.
Not to mention, challenging people as well as disagreement is permitted plenty here (sometimes to our detriment).

If society itself wasn't an echo chamber to the point most of us can predict what's going to come out of someone's mouth or how they will react when we bring up either our reasons for suffering or our plans to end the suffering, the parroted platitudes or the harmful authoritative action taken…then we wouldn't need this place to begin with.
For the unfortunate consequence and result of an unhealthy echo chamber to be called an echo chamber itself, is pretty fucking moronic.

 

[ryo the frog]

this was the first thing that came to my head when I read the title.
though its just a nuanced rundown of the site, I read the whole thing, It stops at like 70 pages. alas, even with its objectivity it still stigmatizes suicide, like eveything else; "The goal of this thesis is to analyze Sanctioned Suicide to determine how users interact on and with the site and to extract information that improves our knowledge on the subject, which could ultimately support experts in planning interventions."

my overall thoughts, I find it cute.

 

[Suicidebydeath]

I skimmed it just now, a lot of technical data analysis that I found boring to parse through (no offense to the author, it's their thesis after all). There were places it was subjective opinion that I found pretty funny. Like early on, saying SaSu was pro-suicide because it discussed suicide methods. How exactly would a site be pro-choice at all if it did not discuss those?

I also felt like echo chamber was used in a meaningless way. It's a pro-choice forum, therefore all of the members discuss suicide in a pro-choice way, ergo its an echo chamber. Okay? That's like saying a pokemon forum is an echo chamber because all of its members discuss their love for the pokemon genre.

 

[wait.what]

70 pages of data crunching and the conclusion is "people on suicide site talk about suicide a lot?" I think we just found a cure for the survival instinct.

 

[lionetta12]

Basically a student wrote a thesis about the forum. This is the link

https://thesis.unipd.it/bitstream/20.500.12608/42144/1/Sartori_Elisa.pdf

I skimmed through this thesis some weeks ago, but I just noticed something, this is written by a student in the Faculty of Mathematics? Their guiding professors in the thesis specialize in machine learning (maybe they had an AI write this or want to feed our data into ML?), joke aside, it seems like this person that wrote the thesis specialize in IT as well, namely in the technical parts of IT. But all the research papers of their professors is about news articles and propaganda. I find it a little weird, I thought that this would be written by a liberal arts student or someone who studies psychology or medicine, not by someone who studies math and IT.

 

[novem]

It is either you have been hacked or the hosts of the SS site have sold the data!

 

[Versailles]

It is either you have been hacked or the hosts of the SS site have sold the data!

Possibly, after all, coke will not pay for itself (joke)

 

[sizzlingfootnote]

This has been a fascinating thread. My position has not changed: every post you make is logged by an outside party. Some jerkoff will turn your statement into some AI trash. This comment, right here. TRASH.

 

[sevenkarmas]

The author refers to the site as "Pro-choice", not a death cult, pro-suicide, or pro-death. I imagine s/he probably read several threads to understand the context and discovered the people here are hurting physically, emotionally, and mentally.

 

[Shu]

@Weebster

 

[prbreese01]

Basically a student wrote a thesis about the forum. This is the link

https://thesis.unipd.it/bitstream/20.500.12608/42144/1/Sartori_Elisa.pdf

Thank you for posting that. I started reading it and will definitely continue. I'm curious to see what she observed.