Re:Facebook Offers Tools for Those Who Fear a Friend May Be ...
by chillacy on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @08:15PM
(#11906395)
> Do we know if this sort of message causes a person to be more or less likely to take their lives? How can you A-B test that?
Actually... you probably could train a model to detect suicidal posts. I had a friend who committed suicide a few months ago, and I didn't see it coming. But looking back, there were signs in his facebook posts (in line with this article's example of thanking everyone), but our conversations were normal. It is at the very least a wishful line of thinking for me that ML can recognize this type of pattern.
Actually... you probably could train a model to detect suicidal posts. I had a friend who committed suicide a few months ago, and I didn't see it coming. But looking back, there were signs in his facebook posts (in line with this article's example of thanking everyone), but our conversations were normal. It is at the very least a wishful line of thinking for me that ML can recognize this type of pattern.