"How many people came to our contact page, but left without calling the hotline?"

"Don't know, boss. We'd need to add analytics."

"Like what?"

"Google Analytics? It's free and pretty much universal."

"Ok, do it."

It's just standard. Not great, and Google uses the data in all sorts of ways that they don't make obvious. But it's not a cabal of evil website owners selling data to tech giants. They're just trying to run their websites and they're using industry standard, free services to do so. It doesn't cross their mind that they're helping google build individual profiles to sell targeted ads.

I'd love for self-hosted analytics to really get a foothold, not just for the increased privacy, but also because all the tech giants cripple your access to the data they collect off your own site.

It's telling, IMO, that Western cultures deals with suicidality with hotlines you can call. It's like some joke from gonzo journalism come to fruition. I don't know what the answer is, but as a person who's been suicidal, for me it wasn't a hotline. It's even more fitting, if not kind of perfect, that said hotlines farm your data and sell it. :chef's kiss: what else is there to say. Like just about everything else, callous people make money while vulnerable, sensitive people pay up. Beautiful world we live in ;). Please drink responsibly!

This kind of thing is why I wouldn't touch a site like that. Websites, service providers, and internet-connected software that collects data from you can't be trusted even a little, so I avoid them to the greatest degree I can. The rule of thumb is that anything you tell to them, or any data you have put in their custody, is at risk.

Yea this is bad.

I do want to mention though, while this is bad, I feel like we're singling out a site. Fact is, I've seen more places where this doesn't happen. Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one. And while I've done my best to work at those places to get it fixed, there is a lot of inertia and simply ignorance. I'm not talking about small places either. I'm talking about non-tech places that make their profit to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The inertia, the fact that no one else seems to care at such a place. It's an issue. Then I'm always the odd one out and looked at funny. When it's fixed no one really gives a shit and now I'm "that guy". A small form of resentment stays in these people.

Just mentioning my experience. It's stuff like this kind of apathy that gets us a world where a place like a suicide hotline just ignorantly does this kind of stuff. Or at least, that's my hypothesis: it's ignorance and apathy.

There's probably not a lot of data on this which is why I'm sharing this anecdata. I hope it's better than nothing.

I thought Europe was more careful about things like this. This is pretty bad, these people are vulnerable and they're just mining they're data for profit.

Sounds like analytics data. The screen recordings of visits I particularly but. I despise when companies do that and act as if it's a normal thing. It might help your support when a user reports an issue but it's a massive violation of a user privacy and most users wouldn't have any idea it was even possible.

The NL Times just translates Dutch articles and editorializes them for a (mostly American) audience. They should be consistently taken with skepticism. In this case, as other commenters have pointed out, this is "just" Google Analytics.

Data Protection Authority (DPA) should investigate. In Germany, the company's DPO (Data Protection Officer) has personal, criminal liability. For these cases, I'd like to see them in front of criminal court, and see what happens. I wanna see someone having a criminal record for this, and then all the stupid excuses of large companies about "I didn't know" and "I thought lalalala" will stop rather quickly. It will turn out that, at the end of the day, it was just a resource issue. And when criminal liability is on the table, resources magically... appear.

It's time to be serious about this. Unacceptable.

> Stichting 113 likely violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sharing this data. The GDPR states that extra care must be taken regarding the security of medical personal data, which includes contact with an anonymous suicide prevention hotline.

This is quite sad to think about in multitude of ways :-(

What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.

> “At this moment, we are investigating what happened, how this could have occurred, what the potential impact has been, and what our next steps are,” the spokespersons aid. They didn’t say whether the trackers would be turned on again

I hope the investigation that they are saying in the articles goes swiftly to really find out the real reason as to why this ended up happening in first place and the reasons behind it are made public sooner rather than later.

I have lately thought about how the only tech I am interested in now is to assist programming. Programming for programming. Eternal yak shaving. And a big part of that is that end-user digital technology is a dystopia. No, not dystopic, not going in a bad direction. Just dystopia. Vultures and thugs at every corner preying on every “convenience” and mistake that you could make.

It is also good for mindless entertainment in between the real things that sometimes happen. And listening to music.

> This website uses cookies > We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features

I know there are some services that send GDPR data removal requests on your behalf. I wonder if there are any similar services that send messages like "Why the hell do you need these cookies?" to website operators.

I hardly ever see these cookie banners as my browser blocks most of them, but I still think it would be great to rub the idea of "Your website doesn't need any non-technical cookies" in website operators' faces.

At least you want get targeted ads for antidepressiva in the Netherlands!

Sheesh, reality is more cynical than any bleak humorist could ever write.

I missed when tech was about saving people's lives not this

Who are the founders, their funders and their motivation?

If nto illegal, it seems clear that is inappropriate.

Free cloud service = risky.

Hate this

only one of the most vulnerable groups in our community.

"Dutch suicide prevention hotline shares visitor data with tech companies" is certainly one way of saying "Dutch suicide prevention hotline website uses Google Analytics".

Another name for this article title: Dutch suicide prevention website uses bog-standard industry analytics that share absolutely no PII and threatens no one. No individual can be found who's actually experienced harm from this.

"Do not kill yourself, please! You still have so much value that can be extracted from you."

This kind of crap is why I am moving all of my tech stack to the US

"Young adult suicide rates dropped after U.S. launched 988 hotline":

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/988-crisis-hotlin...

"Suicide deaths dropped 11% from projected rate in the first two years of the revamped lifeline"

* https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/22/988-hotline-linked-11-pe...

To me, the hotline is an absolute joke and one of the last things I would do if I were contemplating harming myself. I've often wondered if there is hard data showing it is effective overall, or whether it's just bandwagon group think run amok.

I have lost a number of friends to suicide, and as a result I spent a significant amount of time thinking about what could have been done to have helped them before it was too late. In nearly all cases, it was pretty well thought out and not a spur of the moment thing. In some cases, they even took steps to prevent people from discovering their plans. So anecdotally, a suicide hotline would not have helped at all.

Based on some searching though, it seems like there is data showing that it helps on the whole. I guess for people who are having a spur of the moment thought, it might be potentially helpful. However I also found some people saying that seeing the prolific messages about calling the hotline when searching for information about things really pushed them away and somewhat backfired.

I guess ultimately this is a very complex issue with no one size fits all solution. If I ever get to a point where I no longer have to work, this is a cause I would love to work on for the people that tend to think it through more and less spontaneous.

As another, intermittently suicidal person, I have never received helpful support from a hotline. In fact, I have never managed to speak to another human on the phone at all.

Out of four hotline calls in my life, mostly as an older teenager, I waited for >1 hour in every case, listening to pre-recorded “please continue holding, we will get to you” messages and elevator music, before giving up.

The only time I contacted a human it was via a text chat, and the interaction was laughably shallow — they hit me repeatedly with condescending, “reflective listening”-style questions and basically offered no depth or consideration to my situation, or me as a person.

If these services demonstrably save lives then that’s great, but they did absolutely nothing for me.

What do you advocate for to help people contemplating suicide? WHat do non-Western culture do to "deal with suicidality"? The issue is when the hotline is selling the data and not that the hotline itself exists.

The hotline is isn't "selling" the data.

The hotline installed analytics software to help them do their job.

Do "non-Western culture have a better solution to suicidality?

This is meant for people that are socially isolated, and don't have anyone to talk to about their personal issues and challenges. It's of course not great that it supposedly has a need to exists. But the fact that it is there to provide help to people that can't get it anywhere else, is a good thing I would think.

Edit: Apart from that, the people that are running it are probably not technically skilled or aware, so privacy issues like this should be highlighted.

I think many people, not all, who are labeled “mentally ill” are just more attuned to the truth that society is depressing and anxiety inducing. In other words, the so called normal people are the crazy ones. But we define mental illness relative to how well someone can function in society, that’s literally how the DSM is used, even though society is clearly mad and perverse and 10 minutes on Twitter or reading the news is more than enough evidence to draw that conclusion. Every tech CEO or celebrity or successful person could be diagnosed with a multitude of mental illnesses, but because they’re “productive” members of society we glorify them instead. Explain to me how it’s normal and healthy to work 100 hours a week, take ketamine and adderall and other hardcode drugs regularly, post rants on the Internet at 3am, go make a decision that hurts or kills thousands of people, and then hit up the golf club after.

Then we take the people who notice all of this madness and tell them they’re crazy, ill, and malfunctioning. We put them in this Kafkaesque nightmare of gaslighting that probably does drive them mad over time.

I don’t want to say that if you’re hearing voices telling you to do things that you’re ok, but if you just feel depressed or anxious I think there’s a good chance you’re just awake to the sickness of society that most people are still in denial about and it might make you feel better to know you’re not the broken one. You still need to figure out how to adapt to the world, but just knowing you’re not broken gives you a foundation to build from.

I saw a LinkedIn thread just the other day that called it the "suicide prevention industrial complex," and that phrase will stick in my head like "orphan crushing machine" or "leopards eating faces"

I wasn't going to comment, but this is just too dumb on too many levels.

The hotline is not the way to deal with suicidality - suicidality is a longer process and something you can ask your GP about and most help is covered under most western versions of universal health care.

The hotline is an idea that intervenes in the last steps of a suicide process. The idea can reach into the moment where people have convinced themselves they're stuck - and they can reach out with extremely low effort or barrier to entry.

If you have some better 'idea' we can spread into the culture that does this better, then by all means enlighten us.

---

You could have made a case and started a discussion how too many people see the existence of the hotline as _the_ way to deal with suicidality, but you didn't. You just decided to spread some shallow vibe nonsense.

The NYT released an article[0], sorry paywalled, that discusses the effectiveness of the 988 hotline in lowering the number of suicides where it is available. Sadly, because of the joke that is mental health coverage in the US, that's as good of news as I've got for you. Mental health coverage isn't even available on the open market AMA (Obama Care), so 988 is the best we can offer.

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/science/988-youth-suicide...

I've heard the Dutch one is is a little better. The ones in the USA aren't likely to do much more than call police to put a mental hold on you, during which the hospital will rack up so many bills that it would make anyone suicidal. And then yay, your gun rights gone forever, so if you are suicidal in part because you live in a dangerous impoverished shithole good luck defending yourself afterwards!

> It's telling, IMO, that Western cultures deals with suicidality with hotlines you can call

What is it telling?

Learnt a new word today: suicidality. Sounds like physicality, but with deadly consequences.

The logical next step is to replace the suicide hotline operators with AI. And maybe add a way for other people to gamble on the results.

Those hotlines literally drop suicide rates. They wont help everyone, but they do have good track record of helping people.

when society gets too big, sociopathy and opportunism win out

Other websites with similar societal impacts and responsibilities have already been covered in Dutch news before, from governments to health information websites to healthcare providers.

The 113 suicide prevention hotline works together with professionals but it's not an official health care provider as far as I know.

There are probably plenty of similar websites with similar problems, but 113 is well known within the Netherlands so it's a poignant example to use in the media.

Getting media coverage on this will probably make these organizations do better, at least until the next conversion improvement marketeer gets access to the backend.

Their chat service uses something called "sprinklr.com", blocked by my filters automatically, which calls itself "The definitive AI‑native platform for extraordinary customer experiences".

I suppose there's always the phone number.

I have a similar outlook atm as one of "those guys."

Everything takes so long, nobody is held accountable. The most likely result of pushing for any type of positive outcome for basically anything is some form of punishment or social degradation.

And so, as of October 2024, I don't do it anymore.

I will also note that most of the things I see "being corrected" these days are entirely fictitious.

As an example is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Canada. They tossed out a valid complaint about Shaw (during Rogers buyout) for jurisdictional reasons. Then they are on the news making odd statements about (exclusively) OpenAI not being honest about using your data?

It's all a show it seems. I figured it needs to get a qhole lot worse before it can get any better.

I have moved to internal tooling creation and have airgapped a machine/tool each month this year so far. Just a laptop and my social phone remain networked.

See my comment. My hypothesis is: ignorance and apathy that results in incompetence.

Using GA4 is just the normal thing right?

Look in a room full of marketing experts and they will say yes or shrug.

Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.

To answer: no GA4 is not just the normal thing. There is no normal. It's the dominant thing and it invades privacy like hell and the whole thing needs to be thought about in a different way. I'd advice almost everyone to stop smoking that Google crack pipe and roll your own or find an analytics friendly vendor.

Yea I got a bit rhetorical there, apologies for being a bit fed up with this situation.

> Stichting 113 has temporarily disabled all measurement and analysis tools.

It seems that it is only temporary.

> “We realize that visitors must be able to trust that their privacy is protected and regret that concerns have arisen regarding this.”

They also regret that "concerns have arisen". No other regrets have been mentioned.

I think it's more incompetence than malice. It's just such a standard thing for engineers to throw analytics tracking in every website/product they build. Although I am surprised not one person realised this might be a bad idea given the sensitive nature of the site.

> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice. There are so many competent & great dutch engineers and engineers in general, I refuse to believe that they couldn't find anyone ethical enough to take extra care regarding GDPR and sensitivity of the data in general.

Ask 100 random developers to setup a website, and to make sure the website owner should be able to see how many people visit the website, and probably 90 of those developers will default to setting up Google Analytics, just by "instinct".

People generally just continue with whatever they've learned, not revisiting the default choices they make, and it's been ingrained over decades that "Google Analytics is the best way to optimize your sales funnel" or whatever the marketers drink nowadays, so it'll take some time for these folks to revisit their decisions.

> What I am not understanding is the case of why, why would dutch government or website do this, is it out of honest mistake/(incompetence?) or malice.

When it comes to companies' wrongdoing, I'm starting to not care whether it's incompetence or malice anymore. When money and/or lives are at stake, incompetence is shaped like malice. We need to have a new word for this kind of "deliberate stupidity" and punish it just like we punish intent to do wrong.

> Though, not at places that have such a strong social mission as this one.

That's the shameful thing really. Yeah it's pretty common to have (GDPR violating) cookies and 'share all analytics' settings on by default with "privacy is very important to us" statements on the website. As "one of those guys" I see this all the time. For a commercial business it's just eye rolling, but these kinds of social good companies really should be held to a higher standard. With that standard just being "privacy by design please".

The websites' feedback form gave me a "try again in !minutes" error so frankly I think the dev team is malicious by incompetence. It's a very pretty site though, so at least there's that.