Dude threatens to commit suicide on a message board, then streams it live.

That's an interesting question. That would take a bit of thinking for me to determine whether or not I think the admins should be held responsible.

I suppose that their lack of response could be considered a contributing factor to his death, but then again, I don't know that I would say they have any responsibility to do anything about it. The person was using another website/program to stream the suicide. People claiming that they're going to kill themselves is a frequent occurance on the internet, and generally I think it is regarded as simple "attention whoring." It's an unfortunate thing that happened, really.

Some other factors that would be relevant to whether or not the admins should be held responsible: Did they know any of his personal contact information to even contact authorities? I mean, if they don't know his name, where he lives, etc, there isn't a whole lot they could do other than figure out where he is based on his IP address. Even then, that's an unreliable means of finding out where someone is, within a reasonable amount of time. Did they know ahead of time that he was actually going to kill himself and stream video of it? How old was he? It's really difficult to say whether or not they should be held responsible.

My final question. Is there a video? I want to see this shit because I'm screwed up like that. GG internet.

Some other factors that would be relevant to whether or not the admins should be held responsible: Did they know any of his personal contact information to even contact authorities? I mean, if they don't know his name, where he lives, etc, there isn't a whole lot they could do other than figure out where he is based on his IP address. Even then, that's an unreliable means of finding out where someone is, within a reasonable amount of time. Did they know ahead of time that he was actually going to kill himself and stream video of it? How old was he? It's really difficult to say whether or not they should be held responsible.

You have to provide a personal e-mail account to register for their forums; I'm sure they had somewhat of an idea of his personal contact information or could at least access it in a relatively timely manner.

Yes, he made it apparent that he was going to stream it. Here is the link to the first page of his thread. They deleted it but google's cache has it up for now. The first link on my opening post in this thread has a video of the cops and EMT checking on him and I assume pronouncing him dead.

Abraham Biggs was his name. He was 19 and had a 2 year old son.

After reading the first bit of that thread, I can't help but to think of Spector.

Mods arent responsible for his death, he made his bed and now he will lay in it. He choose to take the pills, to stream it on that forum, to do this this this and that. He made the choices, he made the multiple empty threats about killing himself earlier. No one was expected to beleive he would really do it this time. He is responsible for his own actions imo.

Look on the brightside though, theres one less fucked up individual on earth .

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Crowd Controlling since November 2004

It still could have been prevented. I'm not saying the websites or administrators should be held responsible, but if you post empty suicide threads on the internet, you're clearly begging for attention and you've clearly got some issues. Both of these things seem to apply to this guy, and they were ultimately the reason why he killed himself. He had issues that he did not get help with. Now his family and his kid are going to have to pay for it. It's pretty tragic, in my opinion.

EDIT: I watched the video in the first link. WTF is that thing they threw on him? It looked like they were tazing him.

Also, while I don't think the websites or administrators should be held responsible for anything, I do think that something should happen to the people who were egging him on to kill himself. As much as I love the internet and places like /b/ on 4chan, sometimes shit crosses the line, and this is one of those times. Stuff like this is giving the internet a bad reputation.

It has now reached major news outlets.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27841948

This is such a fucked up story....

It makes sense that he was bipolar. A lot of bipolar people end up commiting suicide.

It didn't take much to kill that kid...

I wish the rest of the thread was still available, and I'd like to watch the first part of the video also.