Dutch suicide prevention website shares data with tech companies without consent

Almost noone is really "evil" in this stereotypical way, it is a thoroughly unhelpful way to view these things, it's more like criminal negligence that people who work for the government to handle medical data still don't know or don't care that google analytics sends data to google after 20 years of google analytics existing, and that the government as a whole does not have systems in place to enforce data privacy and hold people accountable who violate it.

> industry standard

Some time more than 10 years ago, industry standard moved away form Linux, Apache, open source, etc. to big-tech. Many developers attending conferences cannot differentiate propaganda (Facebook connected, Google I/O, etc.) from a technical presentation . And they moved all their stack to software and hardware that is not under their control. A total failure of engineering but a big win for shareholders.

At some point we have to get used to the idea that there are no such thing as free services. If you're not paying for something that clearly has a cost to the entity providing it, then value will be extracted from you in other ways.

"Young adult suicide rates dropped after U.S. launched 988 hotline":

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/988-crisis-hotlin...

"Suicide deaths dropped 11% from projected rate in the first two years of the revamped lifeline"

* https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/22/988-hotline-linked-11-pe...

To me, the hotline is an absolute joke and one of the last things I would do if I were contemplating harming myself. I've often wondered if there is hard data showing it is effective overall, or whether it's just bandwagon group think run amok.

I have lost a number of friends to suicide, and as a result I spent a significant amount of time thinking about what could have been done to have helped them before it was too late. In nearly all cases, it was pretty well thought out and not a spur of the moment thing. In some cases, they even took steps to prevent people from discovering their plans. So anecdotally, a suicide hotline would not have helped at all.

Based on some searching though, it seems like there is data showing that it helps on the whole. I guess for people who are having a spur of the moment thought, it might be potentially helpful. However I also found some people saying that seeing the prolific messages about calling the hotline when searching for information about things really pushed them away and somewhat backfired.

I guess ultimately this is a very complex issue with no one size fits all solution. If I ever get to a point where I no longer have to work, this is a cause I would love to work on for the people that tend to think it through more and less spontaneous.

As another, intermittently suicidal person, I have never received helpful support from a hotline. In fact, I have never managed to speak to another human on the phone at all.

Out of four hotline calls in my life, mostly as an older teenager, I waited for >1 hour in every case, listening to pre-recorded “please continue holding, we will get to you” messages and elevator music, before giving up.

The only time I contacted a human it was via a text chat, and the interaction was laughably shallow — they hit me repeatedly with condescending, “reflective listening”-style questions and basically offered no depth or consideration to my situation, or me as a person.

If these services demonstrably save lives then that’s great, but they did absolutely nothing for me.

What do you advocate for to help people contemplating suicide? WHat do non-Western culture do to "deal with suicidality"? The issue is when the hotline is selling the data and not that the hotline itself exists.

The hotline is isn't "selling" the data.

The hotline installed analytics software to help them do their job.

Do "non-Western culture have a better solution to suicidality?

This is meant for people that are socially isolated, and don't have anyone to talk to about their personal issues and challenges. It's of course not great that it supposedly has a need to exists. But the fact that it is there to provide help to people that can't get it anywhere else, is a good thing I would think.

Edit: Apart from that, the people that are running it are probably not technically skilled or aware, so privacy issues like this should be highlighted.

I think many people, not all, who are labeled “mentally ill” are just more attuned to the truth that society is depressing and anxiety inducing. In other words, the so called normal people are the crazy ones. But we define mental illness relative to how well someone can function in society, that’s literally how the DSM is used, even though society is clearly mad and perverse and 10 minutes on Twitter or reading the news is more than enough evidence to draw that conclusion. Every tech CEO or celebrity or successful person could be diagnosed with a multitude of mental illnesses, but because they’re “productive” members of society we glorify them instead. Explain to me how it’s normal and healthy to work 100 hours a week, take ketamine and adderall and other hardcode drugs regularly, post rants on the Internet at 3am, go make a decision that hurts or kills thousands of people, and then hit up the golf club after.

Then we take the people who notice all of this madness and tell them they’re crazy, ill, and malfunctioning. We put them in this Kafkaesque nightmare of gaslighting that probably does drive them mad over time.

I don’t want to say that if you’re hearing voices telling you to do things that you’re ok, but if you just feel depressed or anxious I think there’s a good chance you’re just awake to the sickness of society that most people are still in denial about and it might make you feel better to know you’re not the broken one. You still need to figure out how to adapt to the world, but just knowing you’re not broken gives you a foundation to build from.

I saw a LinkedIn thread just the other day that called it the "suicide prevention industrial complex," and that phrase will stick in my head like "orphan crushing machine" or "leopards eating faces"

I wasn't going to comment, but this is just too dumb on too many levels.

The hotline is not the way to deal with suicidality - suicidality is a longer process and something you can ask your GP about and most help is covered under most western versions of universal health care.

The hotline is an idea that intervenes in the last steps of a suicide process. The idea can reach into the moment where people have convinced themselves they're stuck - and they can reach out with extremely low effort or barrier to entry.

If you have some better 'idea' we can spread into the culture that does this better, then by all means enlighten us.

---

You could have made a case and started a discussion how too many people see the existence of the hotline as _the_ way to deal with suicidality, but you didn't. You just decided to spread some shallow vibe nonsense.

The NYT released an article[0], sorry paywalled, that discusses the effectiveness of the 988 hotline in lowering the number of suicides where it is available. Sadly, because of the joke that is mental health coverage in the US, that's as good of news as I've got for you. Mental health coverage isn't even available on the open market AMA (Obama Care), so 988 is the best we can offer.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/science/988-youth-suicide...

I've heard the Dutch one is is a little better. The ones in the USA aren't likely to do much more than call police to put a mental hold on you, during which the hospital will rack up so many bills that it would make anyone suicidal. And then yay, your gun rights gone forever, so if you are suicidal in part because you live in a dangerous impoverished shithole good luck defending yourself afterwards!

> It's telling, IMO, that Western cultures deals with suicidality with hotlines you can call

What is it telling?

Learnt a new word today: suicidality. Sounds like physicality, but with deadly consequences.

The logical next step is to replace the suicide hotline operators with AI. And maybe add a way for other people to gamble on the results.

Those hotlines literally drop suicide rates. They wont help everyone, but they do have good track record of helping people.

when society gets too big, sociopathy and opportunism win out

Europe has laws against misuse of data from visitors, so it’s generally safe to visit such websites.

The fact that this is on hackernews means this case is the exception, not the rule.

Even if you're in the US and make a phone call to a suicide prevention hotline the fact that you called them, how many times you called them, and how long you spoke with them can end up in the hands of data brokers. That data will never go away and it can impact your employment, your insurance, be used against you in court, etc.

People in the middle of a mental health crisis shouldn't have worry that trying to get help will cause a black mark on their permanent record with lifelong consequences but that's exactly what surveillance capitalism has enabled.

It's not supposed to happen, your call records should be secure, but of course it happens all the time

https://consumercal.org/about-cfc/cfc-education-foundation/y...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/t-says-hackers-stole-re...

unsure why you are being downvoted. this is universally true. your data is either being actively shared with partners, or inadvertently shared in the form of weak security, exploits, wide-open buckets, etc.

Other websites with similar societal impacts and responsibilities have already been covered in Dutch news before, from governments to health information websites to healthcare providers.

The 113 suicide prevention hotline works together with professionals but it's not an official health care provider as far as I know.

There are probably plenty of similar websites with similar problems, but 113 is well known within the Netherlands so it's a poignant example to use in the media.

Getting media coverage on this will probably make these organizations do better, at least until the next conversion improvement marketeer gets access to the backend.

Their chat service uses something called "sprinklr.com", blocked by my filters automatically, which calls itself "The definitive AI‑native platform for extraordinary customer experiences".

I suppose there's always the phone number.