Kolkata Police stops youth from committing suicide after receiving Facebook alert

In an admirable use of technology and a testament to how closely social media posts are being tracked, Kolkata Police stopped a youth from committing suicide after getting alerted by Facebook. 

According to Zee 24 Ghanta, the Facebook authorities contacted the Kolkata Police when a boy from South Kolkata posted on the social media website that he is going to commit suicide. The incident took place on Monday evening and the Facebook team immediately swung into action. 

They contacted the cyber cell of the Kolkata Police. They briefed the law enforcement authorities with the IP address of the concerned user who was going to commit suicide. Soon, the Kolkata Police team rushed to the house of the youth in Picnic Garden area of the city accompanied with a psychiatrist.

After counselling the man for some time, he was dissuaded from committing suicide. A big tragedy was averted due to the use of technology. Facebook was widely criticised for not being able to stop live streaming of shooting in Christchurch. At that time, Facebook had promised that it would improve its realtime tracking system. Clearly in this instance, Facebook did manage to get its tracking right and saved a life.