It's like if I had a chronic back condition, and instead of finding from people wanting to listen I get the equivalent of a flyer in the mail about back issues.
The person that was trying to ends the potentially uncomfortable conversation and gets to wash their hands of the situation, thinking they helped.
If you're suicidal and posting on social media, of course you know about the hotlines. Getting spammed with it is so discouraging though.
And, for what it's work, I live in the US, and have tried calling the major hotlines in two different episodes only to get a busy signal. A person to talk to what would have helped me most in that situation.
(And btw, I'm not saying people are obligated to help suicidal people. it's just if someone actually wants to help, a canned text response is not effective.)
I often do know how to help people deal with non suicidal depression but I dont always have time and energy to help…and I definitely cannot program a computer to do what I know how to do.
I don’t have any clue how to help someone reduce suicidal intent.
I don't mean "fix the problem that made them suicidal."
I mean physically pick them up and take them somewhere else (a safe place preferably, but there's something to be said for a sudden shock of actual danger). I mean send them a thousand bucks. I mean pay off their car loan, pay their rent for a year, something that eliminates that primary stressor.
Suicide is very often a single/recurrent practical situation that gets catastrophized into sheer despair, yes often with other mental health concerns confounding. But you can't fix those immediately. You can bring force to rehab (not great, many downsides). You can take them for coffee.
Talking might help, in fact it's necessary, but it's not enough.
Banning people who express suicidal intentions from online platforms, which often are the last community they belong to, is unbelievably harmful.
Advertising dollars be damned: companies don't get to put toxic materials in our foods, and social media companies don't get to clandestinely use "crisis support" buttons to figure out who to "clean up".
You may also wish to write a letter to your attorney general.
Even in the few subreddits dedicated to it, you have to be real careful about what you post if you don't want a ban.
Out of sight out of mind... yeah, I guess it works. Reddit doesn't need suicidal people posting about this problem, it hurts the platform and they can't do anything about it anyway, to be fair.
Source: me and 4 people I've talked about it, all were previously banned. Not much, I know, but I'm confident enough they do it on the regular. Again, not really blaming Reddit here, they're a business not a charity.