Non-profit suicide consultation chat service 'Crisis Text Line' ends data sharing relationship with commercial spin-off 'Loris.ai' and deletes existing data

At the end of January 2022, the non-profit suicide counseling chat service ' Crisis Text Line ' shared data with the commercial spin-off ' Loris ' and earned money from customer service software created with Loris. It was reported. In response, Crisis Text Line has announced that it will terminate the data sharing relationship and that Loris will remove all data obtained from Crisis Text Line.

An Update on Data Privacy, Our Community and Our Service --Crisis Text Line
https://www.crisistextline.org/blog/2022/01/31/an-update-on-data-privacy-our-community-and-our-service/

Crisis Text Line, from my perspective  | danah boyd | apophenia
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/01/31/crisis-text-line-from-my-perspective.html

Crisis Text Line ends data-sharing relationship with for-profit spinoff --POLITICO
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/31/crisis-text-line-ends-data-sharing-00004001

Crisis Text Line is known as a mental health support chat service that uses big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to advise counselors on how to deal with trauma such as self-harm, psychological abuse and suicide. Although Crisis Text Line is a non-profit organization, it was reported on January 18, 2022 that Crisis Text Line shared data with the commercial company 'Loris' to operate the service. Loris builds customer service software based on data obtained from Crisis Text Line, and Crisis Text Line has a revenue sharing agreement with Loris to make some profit from the sale of customer service software.

It is clear that AI suicide consultation chat is profitable by sharing user data with companies --GIGAZINE

'The data has been completely anonymized and all information that could identify the consultant has been removed,' Crisis Text Line told the press. 'Data sharing has been agreed by the user in terms of use.' As explained, it was pointed out that the problems are that it is possible to identify an individual by using reverse engineering and that not all users understand all the terms of use.

On January 31, 2022, Crisis Text Line announced that it had terminated its data sharing relationship with Loris. In addition, all the data of Crisis Text Line received by Loris will be deleted due to the end of the relationship. It has also been announced that Loris has not accessed the data on the Crisis Text Line since the beginning of 2020, despite the data sharing relationship.

Dannah Boyd, a social media scholar, researcher at Microsoft Research, and director of Crisis Text Line, said in a blog, 'The ethical problem we are facing is'data access for private companies'. I want to tell you that it's not a simple matter. ' For example, in order to develop a chat service that responds appropriately to people in need, it is necessary to use the conversation between the counselor and the user on the platform as data, which is 'personal care and support'. It corresponds to the use of data in the range beyond. Even if the terms of use can be stated, there are always ethical issues, Boyd said.

Boyd also focused on solving the problem of 'how to provide help when there are not enough counselors' as the service becomes more widespread and used by various organizations and businesses. Resolving this issue required 'prioritizing and servicing the most risky incoming requests as quickly as possible.' Boyd agreed to launch Loris as a spin-off of the Crisis Text Line in order to build such a mechanism, secure profits for operation, and consider ethics. Loris is a company independent of Crisis Text Line, but since it is a separate company for commercial purposes, it seems that it took the form of 'data sharing for research purposes' without allowing full access to the system.

However, Boyd posted on Twitter, 'I was wrong when I agreed to a data-sharing relationship.'

A little while ago, @CrisisTextLine also announced that we ended our data-sharing agreement with Loris: https://t.co/WBNTedlCTG I was wrong when I agreed to this relationship. (2/3)

— Danah boyd (@zephoria) February 1, 2022

Crisis Text Line emphasizes the importance of increasing the transparency and openness of the service, saying, 'We are always aiming for a higher level. We welcome feedback from experts and the community.' I solicited ideas for.