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Sad news and Bad reactions

November 22nd, 2008 Posted in Business Strategy

Some sad news in the blogosphere today.

In a striking display of the power of live video, Abraham K. Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site Justin.tv. As we understand it from various forum posts, the 19-year-old Floridian was apparently egged on by commenters on Justin.tv and fellow forum users on bodybuilding.com. Biggs overdosed on pills while on camera and appeared to be breathing for hours until watchers realized he might be serious, at which point they alerted the police.

I’m going to skip over the social commentary on whether viewers were egging on Biggs, whether he (as a known troll) deserved something different, and other such issues.

No, what I wanted to point out is the horrendous response from Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel about the incident:

As for the broadcaster incident last night, we don’t comment on individual videos, however, our policy prohibits inappropriate content on Justin.tv. We rely on the community to flag videos that they feel are objectionable. Once a video is flagged, it is reviewed and quickly removed from the system if it violates our Terms of Use.

How does someone using your service to kill themselves have anything to do with community based moderation? Why not say something like: “I’m sorry for the Bigg family”, or “Our thoughts go out to the community on such a sad day”, or any number of other, relevant responses.

I’m hoping this is simply an out of context or incomplete quote…


This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 1:48 am and is filed under Business Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Jake: They're probably too worried about liability to allow even an ounce of compassion to come through. It sounds like a canned response and I too hope that it is incomplete. They should know that all eyes are on them and this is no time to care more about yourself than a family that has lost a loved one.
  • Hey Jake -- longtime reader, first-time poster. You're right -- from a humanitarian and emotional perspective, it was a bad call on the company's part. However, I'm willing to bet the response was carefully vetted by numerous execs and lawyers.

    In that world, an apology -- or even a mention of sympathy -- is often perceived as an acceptance of liability. It's an absolute shame: both the youngster's death, and the mishandling of the company's response.
  • Welcome to the site, J.C.! I hope you comment more :)

    OK, to your points.... I would harbor a guess that there was very little "vetting" from anything other than a "don't get us sued" standpoint. That may be protectionism, but it's not good business. You can absolutely show empathy/sorrow/emotion/humanness without there being a legal recourse.

    I'd actually even go further to say that in one of the most lawsuit scary industries, medicine, an apology actually helps REDUCE lawsuits more often than not.
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