When Loic Le Meur pitched Seesmic to Holland’s most talented cross media talents, he also told them how he handled a suicide announcement on his video service. Quite an interesting story, so I figured I’d share it with you.
Le Meur was in his San Francisco-based office, watching a big LCD screen where the desperate person was depicted. “People emailed us that he looked very serious”, Le Meur said, “the guy was about to kill himself, what do you do?”
So while hundreds of Seesmic members tried to convince the man to not kill himself by posting comments on his videos, Le Meur called his lawyers. “We’re a US-based company after all”. They advised him to call the police, which Le Meur did.
“We gave the police his IP address. After twenty minutes, they knocked on his door somewhere in the middle of the US”. An interesting example of a case where security is more important than privacy.
Update: check out Loic’s comment, he actually gave the email address.
Hi, let me correct myself here we actually gave the email address not the IP and the city that was enough and honestly I really hesitated hard but we may have saved a life so I do not regret.
I guess so, if you hire some really good YouTube moderators and combine it with filters who can recognize speech in videos.
I wonder if it was possible to prevent such similar case about Finland school shooting…
I have been cynical about seesmic before but once a service starts playing a role in life and death situations that is a clear signal that something important is happening..
Alright, I’ll update. Would have done the same btw when I could save a life.
glad you didn’t hesitate any longer than you did. It seems like an obvious decision.
Well gooole already have the technology that finds words on video, so they can achieve a pattern for alert… That’s me thinking matrix :)