Teen Suicide: Site Refuses To Answer Questions

[Jazzy]

Staff at ask.fm - the Latvian-based website where a teenager was bullied before she killed herself - have refused to tell Sky News about how it reports abuse.

It comes as the father of victim Hannah Smith called for the website's owners to be charged with manslaughter.

And companies advertising on ask.fm, including Specsavers, Save The Children and Laura Ashley, have pulled their adverts from the website amid "deep concerns".

The 14-year-old girl from Lutterworth, Leicestershire, took her own life on Friday after being abused on the social network site.

Dave Smith has accused the website owners of not caring that "teenagers are dying and killing themselves".

Speaking to the Daily Mirror in his first on-camera interview since Hannah's death, Mr Smith said: "The people that run it should get done for manslaughter or murder because you try contacting them and they don't care.

"These websites should be got rid of, if nothing else they need to be regulated and they need to stop people from doing this."

"If David Cameron was sitting here now I would want to know why he hasn't done something about this six, 12 - two years ago. Modern technology has gone on but the laws have stuck the same."

Ask.fm allows users to post anonymous questions and messages but has been criticised for not doing enough after several other teenagers took their lives - apparently after receiving abuse on the site.

Hannah committed suicide after repeated messages encouraging her to kill herself and criticising her appearance.

Sky's Ian Woods approached an employee in Latvia and asked to see the system for how the firm moderates its messages and how it reports and tackles abuse.

But the worker said the correspondent should speak to an official from the company.

Mr Smith and Hannah's stepmother Deborah said people needed to think more about the effect of their online posts as it emerged their elder daughter Jo has also been the target of abuse on the site.

"How could you?", Mrs Smith said. "People need to stop and think. You can't just sit behind a keyboard and type something and think that doesn't matter. There's a complete lack of emotional intelligence."

Mr Smith added: "There's something not right with the world today that people can tell someone to die so many times that they actually do it."

Source

Question: Do you think this website's owner is responsible for this teens suicide? Why/Why not?

 

[The Dragon Master]

Question: Do you think this website's owner is responsible for this teens suicide? Why/Why not?

I think the suicide is a result of several people's actions. The website owner has some responsibility, for not having proper rules and protocols in place to help deal with the kind of messages that the teen received. The majority of the responsibility lies on the nameless, cowardly people who egged her on and told her to kill herself. They hid behind the anonymity of the site, which should be changed, and because they felt that no-one could trace them or identify them they then attacked the poor lass.

Quite frankly I see no point in the website and it should be taken down, and if it isn't a serious overhaul of how it's run, how you report abuse and the fact that anonymous people can ask questions should be changed.

 

[Jazzy]

Question: Do you think this website's owner is responsible for this teens suicide? Why/Why not?

I think the suicide is a result of several people's actions. The website owner has some responsibility, for not having proper rules and protocols in place to help deal with the kind of messages that the teen received. The majority of the responsibility lies on the nameless, cowardly people who egged her on and told her to kill herself. They hid behind the anonymity of the site, which should be changed, and because they felt that no-one could trace them or identify them they then attacked the poor lass.

Quite frankly I see no point in the website and it should be taken down, and if it isn't a serious overhaul of how it's run, how you report abuse and the fact that anonymous people can ask questions should be changed.

Brilliant and I have nothing to add.