Anuncio publicitario
Apoyado por
Un comité de la Cámara solicitó datos de motores de búsqueda cuyas instalaciones podrían haber sido operadas a través del sitio, que se ha relacionado con muertes. Siete miembros de la Cámara solicitaron líneas de investigación al Ministerio de Justicia.
Envíale un cuento a un amigo
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
By Gabriel J.X. Dance and Megan Twohey
Lawmakers in Washington are prodding technology companies to limit the visibility and reduce the risks of a website that provides detailed instructions about suicide and asking the nation’s top law enforcement official to consider pursuing a Justice Department inquiry.
Responding to a New York Times investigation of the site published this month, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Monday released a bipartisan statement requesting briefings from search engines, web-hosting companies and other tech companies whose services might have been leveraged by the suicide site.
“It is imperative that companies take the threat of such sites seriously and take appropriate steps to mitigate harm,” said the statement from the panel, led by Representative Frank J. Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey.
A representative for Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, told The Times last week that the company had altered its search engine to lower the ranking of the site, which has been linked to a trail of deaths. On Monday, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, sent a letter to Google and Bing asking the companies to fully remove the suicide site from their search results — a step further than either search engine was willing to take.
On Tuesday, Representative Lori Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts, along with six other House members, wrote to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland asking what options the Justice Department had for investigating the site and its founders and what steps lawmakers could take to allow for a prosecution. Noting that other countries had taken steps to restrict access to the site, the lawmakers also asked about removing it from search results in the United States.
The lawmakers said they were writing with the aim to “pursue justice for the families of these victims.”
Officials at the Justice Department did not immediately respond to The Times when contacted about the lawmakers’ letter.
Members of the site are anonymous, but The Times identified 45 people who had spent time on the site and then killed themselves in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and Australia. Most of them were under 30, including several teenagers. The Times also found that more than 500 members of the site wrote so-called goodbye threads announcing how and when they planned to end their lives, and then never posted again.
In recent days, law enforcement officials in Uruguay, where one of the two men who started the site in 2018 lives, began an investigation into the website. The two men resigned as administrators. And the new administrator made the site private, meaning that the content — including discussions about suicide methods, messages of support and thumbs-up emojis to those sharing plans to take their lives, and even real-time posts written by members narrating their attempts — is now visible only to members and not the public.
Families of those who spent time on the website and learned ways to die have long sought accountability from tech companies that lead people to the site, including search engines. The site draws six million page views a month, and nearly half of all traffic is driven by online searches, according to data from Similarweb, a web analytics company.
A representative for Microsoft said that in response to The Times’s investigation, the company had “taken action in line with our policies” and “addressed the ranking associated with this website in our results,” making the site rank lower for most related searches.
Citing The Times’s reporting, Mr. Blumenthal wrote in his letter, addressed to Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, that the content on the suicide site “makes the world a dark place for too many,” and that Google had the ability and legal authority to steer “people who are struggling away from this dangerous website.”
“Google’s hands are not tied, and it has a responsibility to act,” he wrote.
In an email to The Times, Lara Levin, a spokeswoman for Google, declined to comment on the investigation or the senator’s letter.
Mr. Blumenthal made the same case in his letter to Microsoft, writing to the company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, and its president, Brad Smith. The Microsoft representative declined to make any additional comment.
Los operadores del suicidio han utilizado durante mucho tiempo Cloudflare, una empresa estadounidense que proporciona protecciones cibernéticas, para ocultar los nombres de su host, lo que dificulta, si no imposibilita, saber qué empresa proporciona esos servicios.
En 2019, Cloudflare se hizo consciente de los riesgos de la página de suicidio en línea a través de funcionarios del gobierno australiano. Al año siguiente, los padres cuyos hijos habían muerto mientras participaban en el sitio le pidieron a Matthew Prince, director ejecutivo líder de Cloudflare, que evitara ofrecer su hijo al sitio. , pero no respondió. Cloudflare se negó a responder a una solicitud de comentarios para este artículo.
Los dos hombres que introdujeron el sitio, los nombres en línea Marquis y Serge, habían intentado ocultar sus verdaderas identidades. Pero los registros de dominio y las facturas, los documentos monetarios, otras actividades en línea, los registros judiciales y las entrevistas, el Times reveló que eran Lamarcus Small. , 28, de Huntsville, Alabama, y Diego Joaquín Galante, 30, de Montevideo, Uruguay.
Small negó cualquier participación en theArrayM. Galante declaró en un correo electrónico que publicó con el nombre de Serge, pero negó ser fundador u operador.
Luego de que se publicara el artículo el 9 de diciembre, Marquis anunció en el sitio que renunciaba como administrador, eliminando permanentemente su cuenta y confiando la operación del sitio a un usuario en línea llamado RainAndSadness.
El Sr. Small y el Sr. Galante también renunciaron como directores de varios sitios de Internet que operaban para solteros involuntarios, o incels, hombres que las mujeres nunca tendrían sexo con ellos debido a su apariencia y estatus social.
En Uruguay, donde el suicidio asistido es un delito, la policía de Montevideo abrió una investigación en colaboración con un fiscal local en reacción a la investigación del Times, dijo Javier Benech, director de comunicaciones del .
En los Estados Unidos, aunque muchos estados tienen leyes que se oponen al suicidio asistido, son vagas, no abordan explícitamente las actividades en línea y rara vez se aplican.
Los miembros del sitio de suicidios que publican órdenes sobre cómo cometer suicidio, o alentarlos a cumplirlas, pueden enfrentar cargos por estafa dependiendo de la jurisdicción. Pero hasta ahora, ningún oficial de las fuerzas del orden de los EE. . La ley federal protege a los operadores de páginas en línea de la responsabilidad por las publicaciones de los usuarios.
Si tiene pensamientos suicidas, en los Estados Unidos, llame a la Línea Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio al 800-273-8255 (TALK) o haga una parada en SpeakingOfSuicide. com/resources para obtener una lista de recursos adicionales. Vaya aquí para obtener recursos fuera de los Estados Unidos estados
Anuncio publicitario