Paul Zolezzi is an aspiring model that was addicted to heroin. He hung himself at a playground in Brooklyn after he foretold his suicide on Facebook profile. A jogger passing by noticed Zolezzi’s body dangling from the monkey bars at the Mt. Prospect Park playground near the Brooklyn Museum around 7AM.
A few hours before that Zolezzi wrote on his Facebook profile that he was “born in San Francisco, became a shooting star over everywhere and ended his life in Brooklyn. … And couldn’t have asked for more.”
Zolezzi’s mother, Stephanie Zolezzi reported to the Daily News that her son was on a downward spiral since he had a broken engagement two years ago.
“I would say that people get so lonely, so delusional, that all they want to do is be remembered,” said Stephanie in an interview with The Daily News. “He probably wanted to be remembered in a big way, to do it dramatically. That’s what drugs will do to people.”
Paul’s father was a schizophrenic writer who threw himself off the Golden Gate Bridge in his 40s.
Reading this article makes me question about what Facebook’s responsibility is when it comes to these kind of situations. To me, I think that Facebook should create some sort of security force to monitor keywords such as “kill,” “die,” and “dead” and possibly notify authorities if something seems off. It would be a lot of extra work, but it may alleviate situations like this.
People are going to continue with suicide whether or not facebook has a “security force” to monitor various related keywords. To expect facebook to contact the authorities every time they suspect someone may commit suicide is also ridiculous. Where is your proof that it would stop suicides and not cause a waste of resources both at facebook and for police/emergency services.
Facebook has already taken precautions by removing sex offenders from their social network. There is clearly already some sort of security force within their company. Online sex offenses are a crime and so are online death threats.
I’ve heard several stories where someone said that they are going to kill someone on a Facebook status post and then follow-through with it. Are you telling me that because people die all the time, Facebook shouldn’t respond to this kind of stuff, Chris?
The answer to the question in your last comment is YES Amit. Facebook provides a means of communication, much in the same way that cell phone providers, microphone manufacturers, pencil and pen makers and paper manufacturers do. Just because Facebook has the technical capability to monitor such postings, does not mean that they should. People put all sorts of nonsense up in their status messages, much of it coded in a way that only friends or family would understand it. If you want to use it as evidence of premeditation and intent to commit a crime after the fact, that’s one thing. But to preemptively act and monitor communications, that’s a total invasion of privacy.
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