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Amazon “suicide kits” have led to teen deaths

• Comevius 4y ago
  If I have to rate my digital content surely Amazon shouldn't be selling sodium-nitrite to minors as they unlikely to use it for preserving processed meats. Apparently their recommendation engine blindly picked up on the trend that people are buying it for suicide, and it started recommending it for that. In 2022 there is just no excuse for this, nobody should be deploying software in production that is capable of this kind of harm. They had decades to iron out these kinks.
  • ghostpepper 4y ago
    It’s not just the chemical, it’s also a second drug to prevent vomiting and instructions on how to Jill yourself. It’s literally a suicide kit, and it’s appalling that they would sell it to anyone let alone teens.
    • jackblemming 4y ago
      Some people believe in the right to suicide. I don’t think that’s appalling at all. What’s appalling is how America prolongs the suffering of terminally ill or those with horrific chronic diseases who want out. Agreed on the teen part though.
      • spir 4y ago
        I believe in the right to suicide, and I also think transaction costs matter. What if we had 25-cent suicide booths a la Futurama on every street corner? Sometimes people are going through hard times, and it needs to be easier to seek help and connect with other humans who care than it is to off yourself.
        • chrisseaton 4y ago
          If you believe in a right to suicide, don't you believe in a right to making it as low cost and accessible as possible? If you have to afford it and you have to get past a gatekeeper it doesn't seem much of a right.
          • stale2002 4y ago
            You are being obtuse. The point here is that someone shouldn't be able to decide, in the course of 5 seconds, to engage in a permanent decision like this. The reason being, that people make mistakes in the course of 5 seconds, that they regret. So, instead of that, we should be pretty sure before allowing people to make such permanent decision. Such as, for example, by having a doctor talk to the person. This is why the OP mentioned the TV show Futurama. Because in the comedy TV show, people could decide in 5 seconds to do that. And the reason why it was in a comedy TV show, is because that is bad, and absurd, and that's why it is funny.
            • chrisseaton 4y ago
              > The point here is that someone shouldn't be able to decide, in the course of 5 seconds, to engage in a permanent decision like this. Is it a right or not? > we should be pretty sure In what sense is it a right if someone else has to agree to it?
              • stale2002 4y ago
                So, you see zero problem with someone spending 5 seconds to think about a decision and then taking a permanent decision like that? Really? Or are you just hyper focusing on an irrelevant dictionary definition of the single word "right", that nobody else was using? That is why I said you were being obtuse. You focusing on a single word is missing the point, and I don't know why you would focus on the word like that.
                • chrisseaton 4y ago
      • lolinder 4y ago
        Some people believe in the right to doctor-assisted suicide. I don't know anyone who advocates that suicide drugs should be available over the counter to anyone who's feeling suicidal today.
        • guerrilla 4y ago
          > I don't know anyone who advocates that suicide drugs should be available over the counter to anyone who's feeling suicidal today. Seems like that would fall under basic bodily autonomy. Why should a doctor gatekeep something so important...
          • chalst 4y ago
            Because teenagers with suicidal thoughts are most often lacking the sense of perspective about their situation they would gain with maturity. This is a case where rigidly-based reasoning about rights fails the common-sense test.
            • WalterBright 4y ago
              The full set of human rights is for legally consenting adults. Minors have only a subset of those rights.
        • chmod775 4y ago
          > I don't know anyone who advocates that suicide drugs should be available over the counter to anyone who's feeling suicidal today. Chances are on HN you'll find people sufficiently detached from reality to advocate for this.
        • x86x87 4y ago
          Why is it legal to buy a gun but illegal to decide to end your own life? The hypocrisy is through the roof. How are we free if we are forced to live? Btw: we should not encourage suicide. I think we need to help people that are in a position where they are considering and also there are things that are deeply f'ed with our society to begin with that slowly push people to this (ie helping suicidal people is a drop in the bucket if we don't fix fundamental issues)
      • bastawhiz 4y ago
        I strongly believe in the right to assisted suicide for the terminally ill, but I also believe that it shouldn't be as easy as placing an order on Amazon. Suicide is overwhelmingly an issue with folks who are mentally unwell, not physiologically. There's no excuse for what Amazon is doing here.
        • guerrilla 4y ago
          And why would you deny the same right to mentally ill? It's just as much suffering as any other chronic illness sometimes more. Either you believe in bodily autonomy or you don't.
          • tsimionescu 4y ago
            It's obvious you have no idea what you're talking about, so ideally you should really stop talking. Try speaking to someone who has experienced suicidal ideation and how afraid they are they may actually do it in a moment of insanity.
            • guerrilla 4y ago
              > afraid they are they may actually do it in a moment of insanity. That's certainly not a universal experience. There are rational and valid reasons a mentally ill person may want to die and other people should not deny them that right. It's inhumane torture and a complete disrespect of their personhood to disregard deny their capacity to so reason and force them to live in suffering.
              • tsimionescu 4y ago
                There are, but they are vastly outnumbered by the non-rational ones. There are extremely common drugs used to treat depression (SSRIs) that cause suicidal tendencies in people younger than 24, for example. Depression itself causes suicidal ideation, as do many psychosis. If you actually want to help someone suffering from this, you must check that their desire to die persists for a long enough time, and is not simply a psychotic episode that they would regret later. This is often easily distinguishable, as people who start having thoughts of suicide are often terrified of actually following through just moments later. It is also extremely well established fact that the vast majority of people whose suicide attempts are thwarted are thankful for it, and that cutting access to the easiest suicide methods drastically reduces the total rate of suicides: most people who commit suicide don't want to die, they are just having an irrational episode.
      • archon1410 4y ago
        My first thought was that maybe the parents should blame themselves instead of figurative rope-sellers for being a failure of a parent who let their kids go to the point where they attempt suicide, while claiming they were not even "aware of it". But that's probably too jaded for here.
        • Lightbody 4y ago
          Yeah that’s super jaded. Seriously consider stepping back and thinking about how much grief the parents are going through. I have a young child who has voiced suicidal thoughts and and it’s so fucking hard. The pandemic has been really rough on a lot of kids. Thank god we are we’re finally able to get professional help (after almost a year of waiting for an available therapist). You don’t know shit about the circumstances of these families, and jumping to the conclusion that the parents are at fault and not at least considering that a $1T company could lift a finger is kinda messed up. Sorry for the angry tone but I’m seeing a few folks make comments like yours and it’s infuriating. This isn’t some joke topic and the Silicon Valley contrarian attitude really is frustrating to see on this thread.
          • catiopatio 4y ago
            This isn’t a contrarian attitude, it’s a “parent your own children instead of insisting corporations parent all of us” attitude. I feel for the parents’ grief. I also understand how difficult parenting a troubled teenager must be. I also categorically reject the idea that Amazon is culpable, and I think that these particular parents, in their grief, are merely attempting to externalize their feelings of guilt. They want to rage at something or someone other than themselves.
            • x86x87 4y ago
              Why not both? Parent your children + require sensible safeguards
            • Lightbody 4y ago
              Asking Amazon to not bundle these product and instead put up a suicide hotline suggestion instead is not “insisting corporations parent all of us”. It’s insisting on basic decency. And I *AM* parenting my children when I insist on this. The only thing I’m thinking about is if my kid goes to a dark place again and starts searching the internet. But please: why don’t you tell me how to be better parent to prevent this?
      • P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
        That doesn't make it ok to sell suicide kits to teenagers. Stop defending actions because it's somewhat tangentially related to something else you think should be allowed.
    • throwabroa545 4y ago
      • tux3 4y ago
        "We should improve society somewhat" "And yet you participate in society!"
        • BrotherBisquick 4y ago
          Based commie comic
    • akudha 4y ago
      At their scale, it is entirely possible that this wasn’t malice, just bad algorithms/poor testing. All they had to do was say sorry and fix the recommendations. Instead, they’re lawyering up for a fight. Just how much profit are they making from these kits? Must be negligible to them? I don’t understand why they think it is worth fighting this? Or is it their policy to always fight, never back down, never say sorry etc? I honestly don’t understand. Even ignoring ethics and looking at it from only economics, it doesn’t make sense to me. What am I missing?
    • formerly_proven 4y ago
      The combination of items is a suicide kit, but as far as I can tell Amazon didn't have a literal "suicide kit" item (chemical + drug + scale + booklet) in the catalog, it's just about "others who bought this also bought...".
      • nerevarthelame 4y ago
        What difference does that make? If a child was buying this this chemical from Wal-Mart and the cashier checking them out said, "Oh, looks like you're trying to commit suicide. Have you considered buying some medication to keep those toxic chemicals down, or a book that will walk you through everything?" wouldn't you find that at all problematic? If we can hold companies liable for what their employees recommend, I don't know why we wouldn't also hold them liable for what their recommendation engines recommend.
        • deleted 4y ago
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    • moistly 4y ago
      > instructions on how to Jill yourself Ah, la petit mort, c’est bon!
  • annoyingnoob 4y ago
    > In 2022 there is just no excuse for this To me, its shows the limitations of 'AI' in 2022. We keep calling software 'intelligent' and saying things like 'we don't know exactly how it works', we tell people that it is going to take their jobs - that all seems like hubris to me. Situations like this prove that AI is not intelligent at all and has a long way to go before it is anything like intelligent.
  • andybak 4y ago
    > nobody should be deploying software in production that is capable of this kind of harm. This "kind" of harm seems to hide a huge amount of complexity. Let's assume the algorithm starts off on day 1 just looking for purchases that tend to appear in clusters. There's a potentially unbounded number of clusters that could be regarded as harmful. The options are surely: 1. Be vigilant and special case items one by one. I presume they are doing this. Maybe they aren't putting enough resources behind it or not reacting quickly enough but even if they were then things would always slip through. 2. Never use any kind of bundling algorithm ever. (1) is a forever ongoing task so it doesn't sound like you're referring to that as that's not something where you can "iron out the kinks". However it also doesn't sound like you mean (2) as you seem to be saying there's a way to fix this once and for all. Is there a third option I haven't thought of? EDIT - I guess maybe all "bundles" could require human curation before they are allowed to be displayed. It would be a gargantuan task but it's a valid third option.
    • CPLX 4y ago
      Nothing slipped through. Amazon has been fully informed about it, is doing it on purpose, and is engaging in expensive legal battles to be allowed to keep doing it. This story is so much worse than the headline suggests, despite that seeming impossible.
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        Why on earth would they do so? I believe you 100%, but why Jeff, why?
        • bombcar 4y ago
          Precedent. If they artificially limit their "AI" from outside pressure, then they will have admitted that they can do it, and they'll get pressured to do it more and more. They don't want to deal with that, and would rather wait until a law is passed "forcing" them to do so - coincidentally Amazon will be best positioned to comply with that law and for some reason it'll only ever be used to go after smaller competitors.
  • haswell 4y ago
    While I agree that it seems very problematic that these ingredients are so accessible, I also have to challenge this: > They had decades to iron out these kinks. Aren’t the developments in algorithms that lead to these kinds of unexpected outcomes a bit more recent? This seems similar to the content moderation problems the social media giants are having. The sheer volume of products in Amazon’s marketplace is such that these kinds of things seem bound to happen when applying recommendation engines. This is not to imply that such recommendations are acceptable, but my primarily contention is that this doesn’t seem like a problem that has been well solved anywhere yet.
    • indymike 4y ago
      > Aren’t the developments in algorithms that lead to these kinds of unexpected outcomes a bit more recent? No. Unexpected outcomes are pretty normal for search engines (and really, any complex computer system) since... forever, and really, the solution, regardless of input is is really easy: on input if (keyword in prohibited_phrases) disable recommendations, and on output if (keyword in recommendation_results) disable recommendations to user. I do believe this was solved sometime prior to E. F. Codd's 1970 "Relational Completeness of Data Base Sublanguages".
      • haswell 4y ago
        I was referring to the product pairings, not the search result autocompletion (which does seem like a pretty glaring problem). Cutting off a search early is easy. Deciding that “even though these are commonly purchased together, this pairing shouldn’t be shown” seems like a fundamentally different problem.
        • indymike 4y ago
          Dropping results is easy to do, too. Figuring out what shouldn't be paired? That's a curation problem.
          • haswell 4y ago
  • ufo 4y ago
    Furthermore, according to the article, the sodium nitrate mentioned in the lawsuit has a higher purity (99%) than the sodium nitrate used or processing meat (6%).
    • prpl 4y ago
      Nitrite, not nitrate. I think it’s because the other is mixed with salt (Prague Powder #1). You aren’t buying sodium nitrite though - you are buying prague powder. It’s packaged that way specifically.
  • skeeter2020 4y ago
    >> as they unlikely to use it for preserving processed meats Maybe, but as long ago as at age 12 I was buying it from the local pharmacy to make awesome smoke bombs. >> In 2022 there is just no excuse for this, nobody should be deploying software in production that is capable of this kind of harm You realize the #1 founding reason of the internet outside of sharing academic research was to distribute an entire "book" capable of this type of harm?
    • bastawhiz 4y ago
      The purity of the chemical that Amazon is selling is high enough to make it inappropriate for virtually any other (consumer) use case besides suicide. This isn't the same as what you bought when you were 12.
      • yababa_y 4y ago
        please explain how increased purity makes the compound less suitable, not MORE, for household use? our “kitchen lab” has all sorts of chemically pure ingredients and I feel comfortable knowing there aren’t random impurities in my “house grade” feedstocks.
        • deleted 4y ago
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        • bastawhiz 4y ago
          The purity of food grade sodium nitrate is 6% percent, and then you mix it with salt. The purity of what Amazon is selling is ~99%. Purity here doesn't mean the rest is impurities, it means the percent of what you're buying is that compound. The rest is usually common salt, in this case. The reason it's done like this is so mixing up a teaspoon and a tablespoon isn't a lethal difference. The LD_lo of sodium nitrite is a bit over 5g for a 75kg person. You use an ounce of 6% sodium nitrite to cure about 25kg of meat. That's about 28g, or 1.7g of pure sodium nitrite. The equivalent lethal dose of what Amazon is selling is equal to ~three ounces of the stuff you use for food (enough for 75kg of meat), which ends up looking like a teaspoon at 99% purity. Do you have the confidence to correctly use a compound to cure meat where (for household use) curing 5kg requires so little chemical that you'd need to pinch it onto a scale?
  • fuckstick 4y ago
    > If I have to rate my digital content surely Amazon shouldn't be selling sodium-nitrite to minors as they unlikely to use it for preserving processed meats. Did you actually think about this for more than a second. Despite all this moral panic bullshit I would wager the majority of minors purchasing sodium nitrite are doing so for its legitimate uses. Teenagers with cooking or aquarium hobbies are not that rare - sodium nitrite suicides seem to have been in the single to low double digits for most countries - which when they report 150 to 200 percent increases over the year sounds all the more sensational. This is stupid. Might as well ban ropes. Some of you might want to look up the stats on intentional and unintentional Tylenol toxicity and number of deaths - it is 1000s and 100s more respectively.
    • amilios 4y ago
      The article says that the Amazon recommendation algorithm was also recommending along with the sodium nitrite, "a scale to measure a lethal dose, a drug to prevent vomiting, and a book with instructions on how to use the chemical to attempt suicide". This is beyond just suggesting the chemical itself, this is almost suggesting to certain users to commit suicide.
      • x86x87 4y ago
        The way I imagine this working is: you buy X,Y and Z. If enough people buy these together (along with other things) the algo will deduce that if you buy X you also probably want Y and Z. It will recommend them. This is not new and there are plenty examples.
      • fuckstick 4y ago
        I mean I don’t automatically believe this bullshit based on the source - it’s coming from a law firm with very specific priorities in producing a narrative. Having known about 60 minutes scandals over the years I am just as likely to believe they withheld this story because the facts didn’t even meet their questionable standards. Some emotional grieving parents and a law firm are all you need to them turn that into another media circus. Maybe their recommendation system was aggregating. Or maybe it was just suggesting specific things the user had viewed or purchased recently. I’ll withhold judgement until less charged “facts” are out in the open. For a forum that so often likes to cite Gell Man amnesia - how about fucking now?
  • PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > Amazon shouldn't be selling sodium-nitrite to minors The category of things that "might be harmful to minors" is impossibly broad. I suspect Amazon will be removing this chemical from their listings, just as Amazon and eBay constantly add new items to their banned items list. There are several chemicals that I ordered from Amazon in the past that now can't be found online, and I expect it's only a matter of time until pure sodium nitrite also disappears. The bigger question is: Should we be forcing every online marketplace to perform strict age verification of every customer? From the article: > Kristine was able to create an Amazon account even though she was under 18, skirting Amazon rules against underage account holders—the lawsuit notes that Amazon does not verify age. If a minor can get ahold of a credit card, it's not hard to imagine that they can also get ahold of their parent's drivers license to go through an arbitrary age verification too. Even if they did perform age verification on accounts, how would you expect Amazon to verify that the person pressing the Checkout button is actually the parent, and not a minor who sat down at their parents' computer and went to Amazon.com? It's really easy to make blanket dismissals of difficult situations in comments ("Amazon shouldn't be selling X to minors...") but the reality is that the only way to prevent these things is to remove them entirely from the marketplace. Amazon does remove a lot of potentially misused medications and chemicals from their marketplace, but the list is never going to perfectly capture every single combination of items that might trend as being harmful. What would you propose as a practical solution? A blanket ban on anything that might be harmful?
    • deleted 4y ago
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• pmg1991 4y ago
  • aliqot 4y ago
    This is the 'sue the gunmakers' argument.
    • haswell 4y ago
      While I don’t believe the parent argument is well founded, this is also meaningfully different from the “sue the gunmakers” argument. This scenario feels a bit closer to Walmart selling guns without properly vetting the buyer, which does seem like something the seller could/should get in trouble for. This is also an imperfect comparison because Amazon is just facilitating the sale, not directly selling the product. But my primary point is that there are more layers to consider here.
    • tacitusarc 4y ago
      It's more like if a gun store sold a kid a gun and recommended they buy a booklet titled "School shooting for dummies" and then that kid went and shot up a school.
  • mscarborough 4y ago
    Not surprising coming from South Carolina law enforcement, but these are THC gummies with clear packaging (that have a warning label and state "Cannabis Product"). Are we really to believe criminal is going to unpackage and give out to unsuspecting children, just to get them hooked on the marijuanas? Instead of selling them?
  • themitigating 4y ago
    Fears of mass poisoning and other harms to children during Halloween is bs.
• kitanata 4y ago
  As a developer, as a data scientist, as a designer, as a business leader, you are responsible for things like this. Do not make excuses. Do not disclaim liability. Acknowledge the mistake and fix it. We can do better.
  • paulpauper 4y ago
    amazon has so many products and so many customers that it's inevitable something like this will happen no matter how hard you try to prevent it.
    • hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
      That's why you need to make a real effort to prevent things like this one from happening (identify critical areas, make necessary changes) and when it happens, take an action immediately.
    • foepys 4y ago
      Billions in profits and apparently no way to prevent this because "Amazon is big".
  • capableweb 4y ago
    I'm sorry, not sure I understand correctly. What are they supposed to do here exactly? I understand and agree that if there is something ethically or morally wrong, we as humans should do something to avoid that, absolutely. I'm just asking to have it clarified for myself what the actual problem is here, and what possible solutions there could be.
    • CPLX 4y ago
      They’re not supposed to say hey are you trying to kill yourself let me help with that.
      • catiopatio 4y ago
        They didn’t. These journalists, on the other hand, have parroted the lawsuit’s PR campaign for clicks, and in doing so, have actively, purposefully, and knowingly spread this social contagion farther than Amazon ever could through their inadvertent recommendations.
• bjt2n3904 4y ago
• hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Easy fix for Amazon: just sell the sodium nitrite as part of a firearm, a right that cannot be abridged!
• deleted 4y ago
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• newaccount2021 4y ago
  totally inane likewise, I get "carded" now for buying spray paint at Home Depot because some subhuman enjoys huffing I am tired of the dregs of humanity dictating how the rest of us live I don't care if you buy spray paint to huff. Enjoy your huffing and stay out of my life
  • paulpauper 4y ago
    It's coming to the point in which protecting children means everyone else has to sacrifice their privacy and freedoms . no thanks.
  • bogwog 4y ago
    The societal harms of children huffing paint are, in your opinion, not as bad as the personal inconvenience of having to pull out your ID at the checkout line? You must buy a lot of paint.
    • cypress66 4y ago
      It's not just the one thing. It's all the things that we have and keep adding because "think of the children!"
    • newaccount2021 4y ago
  • goatherd 4y ago
    So what if you get carded? Deal with it, it's hardly a problem is it.
    • catiopatio 4y ago
      I shouldn’t even need to carry government-issued papers, and I think it’s a serious step backwards that it’s essentially required to navigate modern life. I am curious, though; do you support requiring government-issued ID to vote?
• iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Here's the fixed headline: "Parents lack of parenting have led to teen deaths". This is nothing but an attempt at shifting blame.
• atahanacar 4y ago
  Let's ban ropes because people might use it to hang themselves.
  • Someone1234 4y ago
    Or more to the point, ropes are fine, books on tying knots are fine, but if you recommend them both together it is a "suicide kit."
    • adamdusty 4y ago
      Sure except the book is actually how to hang yourself.
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        And the ripe is pre-tied (this concentration isn't used for food preservation)
        • hooverd 4y ago
          High concentration products are nice because you can dilute them as needed without having to keep a ton on hand.
          • iancmceachern 4y ago
            They also are high concentration hydrogen peroxide that will eat ones arm off. We intentionally don't sell it to the general public at that concentration for safety reasons. It seems that the benefits outweigh the costs in my example and with thebtopic at hand. A bit more convenience for some is not worth the preventable death of others.
            • Ekaros 4y ago
              I'm kinda torn should Amazon be selling high-purity dangerous chemicals or not. On other hand it makes life easy, but on other maybe somethings should have some control in place. That being specialist store who might look at order and give some customer support.
• Someone1234 4y ago
  There's a deep censorship vibe on this one. Seems like at the crux of this lawsuit, isn't that Amazon is selling products they're legally allowed to sell, it is that Amazon is also selling a booklet with information that is readily available online telling people how to use that product in unintended (deadly) ways. HN hates Amazon, HN also hates censorship, the question is which do we as a community hate more? Should a company be liable for the free access of information? There's even some people in the comments already calling for new age restrictions on Amazon accounts for certain products, I wonder how long once that is implemented before certain localities pass laws restricting access to "unpure" materials like sex ed/safe sex? I won't even address the "suicide kit" claim since that is simply sensationalist reporting. Ironically I think if this lawsuit is successful on its merit, you could also sue arstechnica for promoting the same thing they're accusing Amazon of. That's the nature of censorship, nobody is really safe once you open those floodgates.
  • CPLX 4y ago
    It’s not censorship it’s product liability. The product fucking kills children. I think internet contrarianism has warped everyone’s brains into an unrecognizable state. The fact that Amazon is defending this behavior instead of saying oh shit we fucked up and dedicating a fraction of a basis point of a days profit to fixing it is apalling. The fact that HN readers are doing the same is incomprehensible. As a society we can stop companies from mixing chemicals that kill teenagers in minutes and instructions on how to do just that with standard household purchases. We can put safeguards around sales of chemicals like that and our societal ability to preserve self-expression will be fine when we do.
    • semicolon_storm 4y ago
      Ingesting table salt or drinking soy sauce is also a method of suicide and has killed many children and adults. Plenty of items that have perfectly legitimate uses and which should remain 100% legal can have deadly effects if misused. You can try censoring the information on how to misuse the substances, but that's never going to be very successful.
• TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  This story had me thinking about the different responses from Google and Amazon for this kind of thing. If you search about topics related to suicide on google, they will show you the suicide hotline number at the top of the search. If you search amazon for suicide related products, amazon will sell you a whole kit of supplies to go through with it. Which is why the comments about "well algorithms are hard" falls flat. Google has complex algorithms too, but they can still add a safety layer. People have specifically asked amazon to stop selling suicide kits, and as far as I have read amazon refused to change. The issue is not that amazon cannot fix this, but that they don't want to. Hopefully this recent bad press will lead them to change their tune, but it is worrying when they can't see the best course of action without bad press.
  • willio58 4y ago
    From the article: > Amazon says that searches for the word “suicide” present customers with a banner at the top of their search results with the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      I assume this stuff works ... but how well? I imagine it's often like the "don't do drugs" ads just above the vape products at the store ...
      • TheNewsIsHere 4y ago
        If my memory serves me, there have been studies done to evaluate the effectiveness of these measures. I don’t recall any off the top of my head, but scientists have also wondered and evaluated. The data is out there for someone more motivated than myself. :)
  • adamweld 4y ago
    Searching Amazon for 'suicide' or 'suicide kit' is showing me a hotline banner, currently. I'm not sure if this is new behavior.
• deleted 4y ago
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• techancent 4y ago
  We should do everything possible to prevent suicides however I have a 2 issues with this lawsuit, firstly Amazon is not selling these items as "a kit". These items are being algorithmically suggested as frequently being bought together, no one is combining these items together and selling them onwards. Additional checks and balances for dangerous items would be appropriate. Secondly, there are several items that be used for this purpose (rope + ladder, razerblades, etc), where do you draw the line?
• Exuma 4y ago
  Is that at least a non-painful way to go?
  • carteazy 4y ago
    My roommate was planning on using this to end his life and after we confronted him he said he chose this because you essentially fall asleep and don’t wake up. Sounds painless but typically those who use it can’t give thorough reviews on the product.
• goatherd 4y ago
  I can understand that this was, initially, an unintended consequence of their recommendation algorithm. But when informed of the problem, how on earth can Amazon justify doubling down on this and trying to disclaim all responsibility. At that point, they know that they have been selling suicide kits to children. This surely makes them complicit in all similar deaths going forward, where these suicide kits have been sold on their platform. What a disgrace.
• giantg2 4y ago
  So no mention of banning the book with the instructions? I guess some kinds of speech are more protected than others (book with instructions vs recommended products). Or is it that Amazon has the deeper pockets? My biggest question is how these teens are purchasing anything unsupervised on the internet.
• deleted 4y ago
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• carteazy 4y ago
  My last roommate was planning on ending his life and once we found out and talked with him about it, the situation escalated and we called the authorities. They searched his room and found this exact product. He bought it off of Amazon. It’s astounding how many odd chemicals you can buy online without a reason for using them.
  • sokoloff 4y ago
    Why should I need to give a reason for purchasing most chemicals? If I did, and was intent on buying this to commit suicide, how long would it take for me to read the extra sentence on the site that told me about sodium nitrite in the first place that would now additionally advise me to say that I was buying it for (acceptable to others) reason X?
• 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Customers that bought this product also bought...
• lazyeye 4y ago
  You can bet that if this recommendation engine problem was costing Amazon money a technical solution would have been in place years ago.
• lloydatkinson 4y ago
  I mean… seems like it worked?
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• karaterobot 4y ago
  I'm generally on the side of believing that Amazon is not legally responsible for what people do after buying things that other retailers sell them on their marketplace. That's a bad road to go down, and I'm afraid it would lead to unintended consequences if applied broadly. I also do not believe that Amazon is headed by a cabal of cackling villains who want kids to die, because they make $2.39 every time one of them buys poison on their marketplace. Instead, I think they're a big company that has a bunch of regular people focused on a bunch of different goals, and not really paying attention to this kind of thing until it becomes an issue. Hanlon's razor, etc. BUT, given the bad press, why wouldn't Amazon put high-purity Sodium Nitrite behind some kind of age verification? They do have that process in place already for other items. Why not override the (algorithmically-generated) "suicide bundle" with something else? I'm sure they've done that in the past, too. Why do they just not do anything, and instead allow themselves to get caught up in a lawsuit and confirm people's beliefs that they're cackling villains? Seems like an unforced error.
• zuminator 4y ago
  I believe retailers should be banned from selling suicide kits to minors as a matter of law. I don't however think they should be civilly liable for their products being used for self-harm. Having said that, it also strikes me as a particularly boneheaded business policy to effectively kill off your own customers. At the very least while Amazon is spending millions defending themselves from lawsuits they should be quietly discontinuing this practice.
• kag0 4y ago
  > a book with instructions on how to use the chemical to attempt suicide I'm not an Amazon apologist. But if someone is adding a book on how to commit suicide to their cart then my first worry is not going to be what an online vendor suggests to bundle with that. > “knowingly assisting in the deaths of healthy children by selling them suicide kits.” I think it shows a wild conception of health if we think someone buying a book on how to commit suicide and tools to go with it is healthy
• sagebird 4y ago
  If a family owned market sold these items to a 16 year old - and a man Bezo’s age were working the register, and looked up the store policy and concluded this was a permissible sale- I think people would not accept that. And yet we accept automation unblinking, even though automation includes the above scenario.
• mountainb 4y ago
  This doesn't likely meet the standard for negligence on Amazon's part because it would need to be definitively shown that Amazon's negligence to prevent harmful recommendations (themselves not necessarily illegal) was an essential and substantial cause of the suicides. § 401 of the California Penal Code, cited in the complaint, states: "(a) Any person who deliberately aids, advises, or encourages another to commit suicide is guilty of a felony. (b) A person whose actions are compliant with the provisions of the End of Life Option Act (Part 1.85 (commencing with Section 443) of Division 1 of the Health and Safety Code) shall not be prosecuted under this section." (b) doesn't apply here, as stated in the complaint. Did Amazon meet any of the requirements of (a)? Sodium nitrite is also used for a variety of other valid industrial purposes. They're not alleging intent, but they are alleging that Amazon breached its duty of care by facilitating the sale of the product and by automatically recommending other products to use in conjunction the chemical to ease the suicide. The core problem with this case is in proving causation. Typically, in cases involving state suicide-assistance statutes that do not involve physician-assisted suicide, the causal chain is far more obvious: it typically involves a person verbally encouraging or furnishing the suicidal person with supplies, suicide pacts, and other similar cases. The theory that a retailer or an e-retailer can be held to have breached its duty of care or that it substantially caused a suicide is unlikely to hold up. It's rather like blaming a hardware store for selling rope. Unless they can prove that Amazon violated the statute, and even if the court considers the negligence claim to be adequately plead, they're not likely going to be able to prove causation. This is also a much weaker argument than those used to try to hold brick and mortar gun retailers liable for suicides, because some of those theories can at least rely on 15 U.S.C. § 7903 (5)(B) if the person who committed suicide indicated at the point of sale their intention to cause harm to themselves or others. Amazon and the brand will probably settle the case, but the impact will probably just be that Amazon itself will make life harder for chemical retailers. If there are more controversies they may also just regulate content like "how to kill yourself" e-books more stringently.
• jl6 4y ago
  How are these “Amazon” suicide kits? I mean, yeah they’re a little bit to blame. Like, maybe 10%? But how come the person manufacturing these kits doesn’t have their mugshot up on the article?
• moistly 4y ago
  I have always figured that when it comes to suicide, the best way to do it is to take out a dictator or other evil entity in the process. Make it count. What’s the worst that can happen? You die trying.
• StuckDuck 4y ago
  This article is so wrong on so many levels. First off, Amazon is definitely not selling "suicide kits", let alone advertising them. What they really meant here is the automated "people usually buy this with" section that suggests other items that are commonly bought along with the viewed item, meaning that the viewer had to be at least aware of what they were searching for (they were probably looking for some chemical). Second of all and most important... WHY the hell were these CHILDREN buying stuff off of Amazon, somehow WITHOUT THEIR PARENT'S KNOWLEDGE? Did they just pay with their own cc, have it delivered to the house all while their parents/guardians DIDN'T notice? If their parents are so uncaring for their children, then I'm not even surprised they wanted to commit suicide. Just my 2¢ and sorry for yelling a bit
  • seer-zig 4y ago
    I agree with you overall, but it’s still a problem that they’re selling books on how to attempt suicide
    • StuckDuck 4y ago
      Yeah, it even seems very weird as well that a company would paint this image on themselves
  • ksaj 4y ago
    Visa and Mastercard both have gift cards available at gas stations, grocery stores and corner stores everywhere you go. There is no age restriction with those. You just need enough cash to buy one. Likewise, a lot of banks have changed their debit cards to VISA debit cards so they can be used like credit cards, again regardless of age.
    • kotaKat 4y ago
      Not even that, Amazon lets you pay with cash now relatively easily on its own. https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=14583169011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=14583169011
  • 93po 4y ago
• yellowapple 4y ago
  > The complaint includes screenshots showing that Amazon auto-fills the search field for buyers, plugging in the word “suicide” after someone types “sodium nitrite” and suggesting that search above “sodium nitrite salt.” I'm unable to reproduce this in the US (using the Amazon app); my autosuggestions (after typing "sodium nitrite "): powder pure curing salt kit food grade 99 nano2 liquid powder pure food grade powder
• ericpauley 4y ago
  To add onto other comments about how strange this article is, the claims regarding CBS are clearly sensationalist. The story is claiming that Amazon is in the wrong primarily for promoting these products on their site. CBS running a story on this, and basically telling the world "Hey, you can buy suicide kits on Amazon", is essentially as bad, if not worse (because they're publicizing it as opposed to just recommending books to people already looking at the product). It's possible a CBS segment could cause more deaths than anything Amazon is doing depending on who watches it. I'd imagine someone at CBS was smart enough to realize this and cancelled the segment. If you look at the tweet thread this is precisely the reason CBS provided: https://twitter.com/cagoldberglaw/status/1578123102256513025 https://twitter.com/cagoldberglaw/status/1578123102256513025
• nobody9999 4y ago
  Even though this is very serious, I actually lol'd when I saw this. I can't buy "prescription" pet food from Amazon without an actual "prescription" (for whatever that's worth -- nothing) from a Vet, yet anyone can buy drugs that will kill you. The irony is abundant, but the results very sad. I don't know how Amazon should handle this, but given their heavy-handedness over pet food, this seems more than a little absurd.
• 2-718-281-828 4y ago
  somehow it's never the parents, family or surrounding society that is responsible, but heavy metal, computer games, rpgs, satanism or ... amazon
• throwayyy479087 4y ago
  This is all well and good but I’d love if this much energy was spent on figuring out why an unbelievable number of children are trying to kill themselves. These things weren’t problems until the modern era, and are concentrated in White and East Asian populations. Interestingly, some people are arguing that mass shootings are a form of suicide, and that these epidemics are linked.
• Furbitz77 4y ago