I have received many questions about my recent decision to shut down the suicide-related portions of the site.
To answer some of the these questions, here is a more detailed explanation of my reasoning behind modifying Lurid’s content.
My decision was not driven by fear of prosecution or negative publicity. I am 100% confident that, legally speaking, freedom of speech rights would have thwarted any effort to force the site down. I made the decision because having finished my CIT training, I have a new perspective on handling benevolent discouragement of suicidal ideation.
Before my training, I thought that giving users an open forum to discuss issues related to suicide and suicide prevention would help alleviate the sense of loneliness and isolation that many of them shared. I still believe that open discussion about suicide is the best way to prevent it. But what I failed to consider is that I was not providing a source of unbiased communication. Through my Google pagerank, people found Lurid by searching for suicide chatrooms. Ergo, I was building a community of suicidal individuals. Even though open discussion about suicide is needed, I now understand that open discussion about suicide between two suicidal individuals is not the best mode of therapy.
While I did my level best to keep Lurid clear of pro-suicide tainted messages, I was powerless to moderate user conversations held offline. Many sys admins would say that their responsibility ends at the content of their site, and from a legal perspective they would be right. The freedom of speech laws that protect graphically violent sites like Orgish and Rotten also extend to me. For the same reasons the owners of those sites are not legally responsible for the actions of their users, I too am held harmless for the actions of Lurid’s users. Legally speaking, anyway.
But this isn’t a legal issue. It is an issue of doing the best thing for people who are suicidal and who find Lurid in hopes of getting better.
For that reason, I have decided that providing a forum for peer-to-peer communication between suicidal individuals is not as helpful as providing information that can lead them to real professionals who can talk to them in a truly unbiased fashion. I am proud to now be one of those professionals and credit the experience of running Lurid as a major factor that pushed me toward volunteering as a suicide crisis counselor.