Inside STAT: Experts raise questions about Facebook’s suicide prevention tools

Over the past few years, Facebook has stepped up its efforts to prevent suicide. It trained an algorithm to recognize posts that might signal suicide risk and gave users a way to flag posts. A Facebook team reviews those posts and contacts local authorities if a user seems at imminent risk. But Facebook's efforts to help people in need has opened the tech giant to a series of issues concerning medical ethics, informed consent, and privacy. It has also raised a critical question: Is the system working? “We don’t have any data on how well this works. Is it safe? Does it cause harm?” asked Dr. John Torous, a digital psychiatry expert. I have a story on what experts want to know about Facebook's efforts — read here.