This sounds like an interesting case of third parties recommending sets of products that create unfortunate combinations within Amazon's own recommendation system. Twitter is an absolutely terrible format for such long form content, so here's the threadreaderapp link:<p><a href="https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1578121305664143360.html" rel="nofollow">https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1578121305664143360.html</a>
I think it's totally fine for Amazon to sell lab-grade chemicals regardless of whether there's a common household use for them. I've personally bought chemicals like this for use in an aquarium.<p>It makes absolutely no sense to blame neutral 3rd parties in someone's suicide. If Amazon's "frequently bought together" feature suggested anti-vomiting agents and a book discussing suicide techniques, that's a pretty unfortunate and I'd really like to see a screenshot proof, but doesn't change the fact that person likely had acquired all the information they needed independently. These personal injury are grifters preying on grieving families.<p>Their claim that "Amazon is a serial killer" is one of the most ridiculous and hyperbolic things I've read in a while.
Alternate interpretation: family tries to shift the blame to others after pushing their kid to suicide, assisted by greedy lawyers.<p>The problem here isn't that dangerous chemicals are for sale. The problem is that the life of the victim was so bad that suicide felt like the better option. Banning dangerous chemicals won't fix that.
On the topic of interesting Amazon recommendations, if you shop for aluminum oxide, Amazon will helpfully bundle iron oxide and magnesium ribbon behind a single button for you. Go a bit further down and they will even sell you cardboard tubes to put the resulting mixture into.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-Oxide-800-mesh-lb/dp/B01CVBXDF4" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-Oxide-800-mesh-lb/dp/B01CVBX...</a>
It baffles me that Amazon doesn’t want to do anything about this. I guess the only thing I can do is cancel my Prime account and never order anything from them in the future.
My son died after taking this product. He was not at our house at the time. He was 35. He was on the phone with my husband as he was gasping for air and I was on my phone trying to get him help as we listened to him die. Something that we will never forget in our lifetime
Why is Amazon to blame for this?<p>Is it not better, assuming a person is set on killing oneself, to give them a way out that doesn't have a relatively high chance of failing and resulting in permanent disability (firearms, overdoses, most ways of depriving oneself of oxygen)? Is it not better to have a relatively less painful method rather than one that, if it goes wrong, you slowly and painfully suffocate to death, should you be so lucky as to die before someone can "save" you and leave you with brain damage (hanging)?<p>I agree that suicide is inadvisable, but I don't think that this <i>lawyer</i> or families should be able to rent-seek because Amazon allowed people who were set on dying to die with some degree of dignity, by no intention of Amazon's.<p>If you look at this <i>lawyer's</i> timeline, you see a quote-tweet of concurrence to a sentiment literally saying, "fuck sanctioned suicide. and also fuck amazon. they’re killing our youth together."<p>It's not Amazon and it's not some abstract suicide that's killing people. It's <i>people</i> that are killing people. Themselves. And they're doing it because life is terrible and miserable and not worth living, not because they just on a whim saw that some online retailer was selling dangerous salt.<p>Society should solve the underlying problems that end up making life so absolutely and undeniably terrible that killing yourself looks like the more rational option, instead of <i>lawyers</i> using tragedy to make money off of moral outrage in the name of trying to treat the symptom. It's pathetic, disgusting and wrong.
> In another case, the child’s parent was riddled with guilt for obliviously leaving the unopened box containing SN on the counter.<p>Apart from the sheer tragedy of this -<p>Shouldn’t all boxes containing dangerous chemicals be marked as such, otherwise $consequences?
Looks like Amazon could do with reading <i>call before you dig.</i> (jwz 1998)<p>[1] <a href="https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/dig.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/dig.html</a><p><i>but who will police the algobots?</i>
Social media and ad networks are so short-term profit driven that the algorithms recommend things to kill off the very users that they are earning money off of.<p>This system is broken.
Sodium nitrite is used to cure and preserve meat. That's why Amazon sell it. It is not a "suicide kit" any more than any other chemical.
Is everyone just secretly a sadist? I don't understand how making it harder for people in that much pain to be freed from their suffering is moral or just.
Instead of stopping to show these "recommendations", we could leverage the information that this customer intents to commit suicide. Contact authorities and get this person into therapy with professionals.<p>That's two birds with one stone. Amazon preserves a long-term customer <i>AND</i> gets to keep the extra $20 for their Q3 results!