Facebook introduces new suicide prevention features

Facebook is rolling out new artificial intelligence tools to help spot and aid users who may be contemplating suicide while using its platform.

Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of product management, explained on Monday that the company will try to recognize patterns in posts and live videos that suggest a user may be considering suicide.

The company will also improve how it identifies first responders to help and dedicate more reviewers on its Community Operations team to review reports of suicide and self-harm, according to Rosen.

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Facebook says that initial tests of its new efforts are already helping users at risk for suicide.

The social media platform believes that its new algorithms to detect such users are helping it find individuals who are considering suicide or self-harm but aren’t being reported as such.

“We’ve found these accelerated reports — that we have signaled require immediate attention — are escalated to local authorities twice as quickly as other reports,” Rosen wrote.

The company is taking advantage of patterns like comments that ask ‘Are you ok?’ and ‘Can I help?’ and points within a video that receive increased comments, reactions and reports from other users, suggesting that something is not okay.

Facebook says it’s working to release the tool across the U.S. and eventually make it available to most of the world.

Since rolling out its Facebook Live live-streaming feature, the company grappled with some users attempting suicide while live streaming on its platform.