Amazon will offer assistance to clients seeking suicide

(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc. plans to promote phone numbers for hotlines to customers who query its site about suicide, the company told Reuters Thursday after research on its site suggested users to search for nooses and other potentially dangerous products.

When searching for the word "suicide" last week in Amazon's US market, the web page showed users "suicide kits" and "nooses".

The results of his website in India include sleeping pills, pesticides and a book titled "How to commit suicide."

Regulatory controls of large technology companies are multiplying. Amazon faces difficulties in controlling its large market, where merchants can view lists of banned or illegal products so they are not detected.

Amazon took lists for the book and the streaming nodes after learning them.

According to its website, the company prohibits merchants from selling products other than the media that promote or glorify suicide.

An article in the Wall Street Journal last week also identified more than 4,000 Amazon mislabeled articles that US agencies had banned or deemed unsafe.

Alphabet Inc., Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. have already issued hotlines in response to user queries with the term "suicide".

While social media platforms have been examined in recent months about how they moderate violent and potentially harmful content, the debate has so far hardly touched the world's largest online retailer.

Amazon stated that it encouraged customers concerned about an item to click on the comment area located at the bottom of an item's detail page.

The information from the Suicide Assistance Line will be added to the detail pages of certain products, informing customers that a free and confidential support is available through organizations such as the National Hotline. suicide prevention.

The message will be released in the coming weeks for clients searching for expressions related to suicide and will appear on the specialty pages of the United States and United Kingdom specialty books starting next week.