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Comment by wtracy | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of the reasons for the call, can you really pursue damages from someone who made a good faith call to emergency services?

The only legal issue I could see is violation of privacy, but I bet their EULA covers them there.

Now, if they screw up bad enough, I could see it precipitating some new legislation that they might not like. Until then, I think they're in the clear.

It's another one of those situations where everyone is incentivized to "do something" whether it's actually helpful or not. "Student dies after symptoms of suicidal depression went ignored" is a splashy headline. "Student unable to graduate after involuntary psychiatric detention" is not.

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As litigious as our society is. And having been involved in wrongful death suits in a previous line of work(firefighter/emt). When somebody is looking for money the swath of people who get sued is as long and as wide as it takes to find deep enough pockets to get some money.

Facebook isn’t exactly the most trusted and liked company right now. So they are exactly the type of entity a lawyer would love to get in a court room.

Google "a bias for action" and you'll see it defended as something good.

Regardless of the reasons for the call, can you really pursue damages from someone who made a good faith call to emergency services?

Yes, you can try to sue for anything. Also, yes, because the lawyer will try to show it was not "good faith" but a failure of software that caused the tragedy. I'm sure the discovery stage will yield enough to make it painful for Facebook. The current feelings about Facebook are going to come up.

A EULA will not protect you from the families of dead people.

> Yes, you can try to sue for anything.

Point taken.

> the lawyer will try to show it was not "good faith" but a failure of software

AFAIK, the phone calls are being placed by Facebook employees, not software. Presumably, these employees have to look at the actual post content to even be able to make a coherent phone call. You would have to argue either that the employee was incompetent, or that the employee was coerced into making an inappropriate call.

What’s the chance that the employees are licensed social workers or psychologists? Also, the software used in the initial data mining is going to come up. I expect discovery is going to be really painful.

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