Paulo Victor Ribeiro writes about the disturbing trend in young people livestreaming taking their own lives and about the response by the streaming service Tik-Tok to the suicide of a 19-year old vlogger named João (a pseudonym) who livestreamed his suicide on that platform that was watched by 280 people. After being informed, the company focused its time and energy on the best public relations strategy to deal with this tragedy before taking action, spending three hours on it before informing the police.
JOÃO FILMED THE last livestream of his life on a summer afternoon a year ago. He was 19 and living in Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná in southern Brazil. The day before, João issued an ominous warning to his fans that he had been planning a special performance.
Their eyes glued to the screens of their cellphones, some 280 people watched the young vlogger kill himself live on TikTok, last year’s fourth-most downloaded app in the world. It was 3:23 p.m. on February 21, 2019. The video, with 497 comments and 15 complaints, remained live for more than an hour and a half, simply showing João’s body.
…Instead of alerting authorities immediately, the company prepared a press statement — that it never released of its own volition — taking no responsibility for failures of the moderation mechanisms that left the livestream online for more than an hour. Officials inside TikTok issued internal orders to ensure that the story did not go “viral” and said its local office should monitor TikTok and other social media platforms to see if the story surfaced publicly.
This is not the first time that people have shown their own deaths on the internet and companies like Facebook and Twitter have taken steps in association with groups like the National Suicie Prevention Lifeline to deal with such sensitive content because seeing such a thing can be traumatic, and particularly dangerous for people in a vulnerable situation.
Suicide is the second-largest cause of death among young people between the ages of 15 and 24, and in Brazil, the number of young people who die by suicide is only increasing. The World Health Organization warns that, due to the risk of copycat syndrome, the issue should be treated with increased caution, especially among young and depressed populations. It’s not hard to imagine the impact a livestreamed suicide that aired for over an hour may have had on those who watched it.
When João alerted his fans that he would be giving a ‘special performance’ the next day, it is not clear that this was what he had in mind, unless there is more to his announcement than what has been reported. So I am not sure what the reaction was from his fans when the horror of what they were seeing began to unfold.
Well, I’m kinda tolerant, so if people decide to kill themselves I have no problem with it.
Might upset me were it someone I knew (hypothetical because it has yet to happen), but it was their choice, and were it my choice, I’d want to do it as easily and painlessly as possible. Golden rule and all that.
I mean, it’s not like the planet is running out of its human inhabitants, so there’s no objective reason to think it a problem.
(And yes, I’m aware of the putative distinction between self-euthanasia and suicide)
Killing others, that’s different.
@John Morales I generally agree, although I don’t believe it’s good to trick people into watching your own suicide. That can be pretty darn tramatic.
@John Morales I generally agree, although I don’t believe it’s good to trick people into watching your own suicide. That can be pretty darn traumatic.
@John Morales(#1):
There a few reasons to be opposed to people just committing suicide.
The main one being that the vast majority of them are impulse suicides. People see an opportunity and take it without preparation or caring for what impact it has on others (well most of the people who do this are way beyond caring for the rest of the world).
If you want to commit suicide take an overdose of pills. Clean, causes no trauma to others when you do it in public. But that is not going to happen, requires planning and the moment that that happens the survival instinct has a good chance of putting on the brakes.
Who Cares:
You really think that’s an appropriate comment in this context?
(That aside, it’s not like you think, as a modicum of research will show)
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In your opinion. Me, I would not care to speak for them.
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Anyway, I grant the impulsiveness aspect. But it is still their choice.
I prioritise the principle of self-determination because I want it for myself, and so it would be hypocritical if I criticised others’ right to it. And I don’t want to be a hypocrite.
As someone who still frequently has the urge to kill myself (for at least 55 years), I am dismayed, though not surprised by the sheer callousness in the comment thread here.
There may be a few people who kill themselves as a lark, but in virtually all cases, they do so because they are in great pain or despair. To say that you “have no problem with it” is to say that the suffering of others does not matter to you and you see no reason why it should. (US) government executed torture and terror bombings? Putting asylum-seekers in cages and their children in separate ones far away? Ho, hum. Just flip the page to the sports section and read about the Met’s latest trade. It’s not like they’re human beings, amirite?
This is a sore point for me, because I grew up among people who didn’t think that the suffering they were putting me through was anything that should even occur to them, let alone do anything about — it was all my fault and my problem, sink or swim, we don’t care. When you say stuff like that, in my mind, you put yourself in the same class as basically every single human being who I dealt with during my first 16-18 years of life.
@Allison
I didn’t mean to come off that way at all and I apologize. I am close to people who have lost loved ones to suicide and yes, it’s absolutely awful. What I meant was that I feel people should have the right to do so, not that we as a society shouldn’t do whatever we can to help those who have to *desire* to do so (we should).
Allison:
You are mistaken. That is not my stance.
I’m not putting anyone through any suffering, I’m not imputing any fault to anyone.
You call it callousness, I call it tolerance. I have no problem with those who don’t choose to kill themselves, either, because it’s exactly the same non-imposition of my own will against their self-determination.
(I have the very same stance towards abortion, for example)
Allison @#6,
I am so sorry to hear that you have been having this struggle for so long. I think it is very hard, if not impossible, for people who have not contemplated it seriously to fully appreciate what those who have done so are going through, and that lack of understanding may come off as callousness, even if not intended.
I sincerely wish the best for you in your efforts to deal with this.
Leave to people to make it about them. Always quick to try and make another person see your side. Honestly down to it, the person who puts their body to rest on their own accord is opting out. That is no one’s fault. Yes, it may hurt others and people may label the person sad or under the influence etc but in the end it’s not about the people left behind. Humans are selfish by nature and want to keep things they love. That’s natural. It’s also natural for some to come to the conclusion that enough is enough. It’s Not trivial. People would rather have you suffer as long as you’re alive. As long as They have you. Somehow living is Proof you’re guna be alright. Both choosing to live and choosing to die are hard choices. You dont choose to be here, but you Can choose not to be. Others have to accept it. It’s.. not .. trivial..