Nonprofit suicide chat service Crisis Text Line ends its data sharing relationship with for-profit spinoff Loris.ai and asks the company to delete existing data
and it's striking to be offered so much inside info about the CTL/Loris debacle — but it also doesn't fully connect the dots. A few thoughts/questions: https://www.zephoria.org/... @thomasfuchs : “My ongoing struggle” (they shared texts from their non-profit suicide hotline with their for-profit spin-off AI customer service “emotional intelligence” company; the definition of breach of confidentiality and privacy) 🤮 https://twitter.com/... @janusrose : i'm sorry, but how is “should we sell data collected from teens in crisis who contact a suicide prevention line” a difficult ethical question? https://twitter.com/... Amy Hoy / @amyhoy : shot: “These are challenging ethical questions with no easy answer.” chaser: “I also knew that people who came to us in crisis were not consenting to be studied.” second chaser: “Yes, there was a terms of service that... I knew... no one would read” https://www.zephoria.org/... Alexandra S. Levine / @ali_lev : NEW- Days after a Politico report on Crisis Text Line's data-sharing with its for-profit spinoff, the nonprofit says it will stop sharing data with that company, Loris AI: https://www.crisistextline.org/ ... Kate Ray / @kraykray : i tried to read this whole thing but it makes me angry. CTL didn't invent crisis hotlines; plenty others exist & have existed with the same challenges without ever selling user data https://twitter.com/... Anita Kumar / @anitakumar01 : Crisis Text Line had faced added scrutiny after @POLITICO published its story Friday, including statements of concern from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) along with a member of the Federal Communications Commission and privacy advocates. https://twitter.com/... Jay Owens / @hautepop : The mistake was to believe that the good intentions of the data holders (Crisis Text Line) outweigh the intentions and desires of the users whose data it is. https://twitter.com/... @jefflandale : when @zephoria talks about the financial stability of @CrisisTextLine we're talking $250K+ for the CEO, $350K+ for the CTO, $200K for the “chief product officer” etc. but rely on volunteer labor to actually support people in crisis https://twitter.com/... Joanne Mcneil / @jomc : And here's danah's defense of productizing this data. https://www.zephoria.org/... John Mark Ockerbloom / @jmarkockerbloom : danah boyd is a thoughtful person I've respected a lot. Her post basically describes how she's rationalized an expanding set of data uses that over time crossed well into unethical territory. Without safeguards, the rest of us with personal data can also rationalize similarly. https://twitter.com/... Melissa Gira Grant / @melissagira : I'm glad danah said something. But this is as dense and lengthy as the terms of service she admits the people using Crisis Text Line wouldn't read. https://twitter.com/... Yvonne Lam / @yvonnezlam : Stripped of the description of soul-searching, this sounds remarkably similar to what employees at open source companies are told when Leadership decides to chase enterprise markets. https://twitter.com/... Anita Kumar / @anitakumar01 : The nonprofit mental-health hotline Crisis Text Line ended its data-sharing relationship with a for-profit spinoff company Monday, three days after @POLITICO reported on ethics and privacy concerns the arrangement had raised. https://www.politico.com/... @blackamazon : Oh give me a break I'm sick of this insider BS “ if you. Knew what i” No. Fuck you . what the entire HELL ARE WE DOING IN THIS SPACE IF WE THINK THATS AN EXCUSE? “If you had the info I had” is what Facebook says to US and we fundraise off it because it's A BAD ANSWER https://twitter.com/... Jack Poulson / @_jack_poulson : These two grafs from boyd explain how the “Grammarly for emotions” for profit subsidiary of CTL was justified. “not only was using texter data...without their explicit consent ethical, but that to not do this would be unethical” https://www.zephoria.org/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
What makes this severance notable is the structure underneath it: a nonprofit built on $23.8M in grants from Reid Hoffman, Steve Ballmer, Pierre Omidyar and others had quietly fed its most sensitive asset — conversations with people in crisis — into a commercial venture it spawned. Ending the flow and demanding deletion is damage control, but it also concedes the original arrangement failed a basic consent test.
First-order effects
Loris.ai loses its founding dataset on demand: it must delete existing crisis-conversation data and can no longer train its 'emotional intelligence' customer-service product on new texter messages, forcing it onto other data sources or a weaker product story.
Crisis Text Line stops the immediate bleeding with donors and texters, but the disclosure that its confidentiality promise coexisted with a commercial data pipe puts every future fundraising conversation with its high-profile backers under a governance lens.
Second-order effects
Every nonprofit-to-spinoff data arrangement in adjacent mental-health and crisis services now gets audited — by boards, funders, and journalists using this case as the template — raising disclosure costs for any organization monetizing user-derived AI assets.
Competing crisis services gain a marketing wedge: explicit no-data-sharing pledges become a differentiator, pressuring the whole category toward stricter consent defaults that raise the cost of building AI products on sensitive conversations.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, nonprofit spinoffs will need consent architecture designed before launch rather than retrofitted after exposure — separating charitable confidentiality promises from commercial data use so structurally that the CTL/Loris arrangement becomes unrepeatable.
Regulators and state attorneys general get a clean test case for whether 'anonymized' framing shields crisis-level data from privacy law, potentially tightening rules on secondary use of health-adjacent conversational data.
The trend: Nonprofits are being forced to treat user-trust data as governed capital rather than free feedstock for commercial AI ventures, with public exposure — not internal review — setting the pace of reform.
I am on the board of @CrisisTextLine. Many people are asking us to account for our decisions. To do so, I wrote a blog post detailing my ongoing struggle to govern responsibly and ethically: https://zephoria.org/... (1/3)
While this change is important and necessary, there are many unresolved questions about how to ethically serve people in crisis. These are top of mind for me right now. (3/3) https://twitter.com/...
A little while ago, @CrisisTextLine also announced that we ended our data-sharing agreement with Loris: https://crisistextline.org/... I was wrong when I agreed to this relationship. (2/3)
This whole situation & this post in particular demonstrate that we are well past the days where we can claim tech companies & orgs don't know any better when they're harming users. It's icky to see someone who once got me into critical internet studies doubling down like this. ht…
Individual privacy will always be at odds with company priorities. I don't care which company, leaders, or investors are involved; any service that uses sensitive data without explicit consent is unethical.* Dubious data collection is never ethical. https://twitter.com/...
1. You do not share data from clients unless they've opted into it. 2. There are precisely zero (0) circumstances in which a client of a crisis counselling service can provide meaningful consent to share their data with third parties. 3. If you are confused, refer to 1 and 2. htt…
every single one of these prioritizes data and ‘engagement’ over effectively providing a meaningful service. ethics-washing is a strain that disrespects all involved. there are other careers that can more easily accommodate a profit mode https://twitter.com/...
reading this list of questions the easy answer to all of them is “no, and also, what the fuck” but also I'm not on any nonprofit boards so... https://twitter.com/...
How did anyone think this was a good idea?! People need to be able trust crisis lines in their darkest moments, not worry their data will be sold to the highest bidder. https://www.politico.com/... https://twitter.com/...
On Friday, Crisis Text Line was deploying the typical tactic of a firm caught sharing sensitive data: claiming its critics didn't understanding how anonymization works. Monday, they about-faced, cancelling the data-sharing agreement https://www.politico.com/...
I don't know, I think it's not such a difficult ethical choice. If the organization needs money, fundraise like everyone else. Get grants. Don't sell data from a suicide hotline. https://twitter.com/...
This is a very thoughtful reflection by @zephoria — and it's striking to be offered so much inside info about the CTL/Loris debacle — but it also doesn't fully connect the dots. A few thoughts/questions: https://www.zephoria.org/...
“My ongoing struggle” (they shared texts from their non-profit suicide hotline with their for-profit spin-off AI customer service “emotional intelligence” company; the definition of breach of confidentiality and privacy) 🤮 https://twitter.com/...
i'm sorry, but how is “should we sell data collected from teens in crisis who contact a suicide prevention line” a difficult ethical question? https://twitter.com/...
shot: “These are challenging ethical questions with no easy answer.” chaser: “I also knew that people who came to us in crisis were not consenting to be studied.” second chaser: “Yes, there was a terms of service that... I knew... no one would read” https://www.zephoria.org/...
NEW- Days after a Politico report on Crisis Text Line's data-sharing with its for-profit spinoff, the nonprofit says it will stop sharing data with that company, Loris AI: https://www.crisistextline.org/ ...
i tried to read this whole thing but it makes me angry. CTL didn't invent crisis hotlines; plenty others exist & have existed with the same challenges without ever selling user data https://twitter.com/...
Crisis Text Line had faced added scrutiny after @POLITICO published its story Friday, including statements of concern from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) along with a member of the Federal Communications Commission and privacy advocates. https://twitter.com/...
The mistake was to believe that the good intentions of the data holders (Crisis Text Line) outweigh the intentions and desires of the users whose data it is. https://twitter.com/...
when @zephoria talks about the financial stability of @CrisisTextLine we're talking $250K+ for the CEO, $350K+ for the CTO, $200K for the “chief product officer” etc. but rely on volunteer labor to actually support people in crisis https://twitter.com/...
danah boyd is a thoughtful person I've respected a lot. Her post basically describes how she's rationalized an expanding set of data uses that over time crossed well into unethical territory. Without safeguards, the rest of us with personal data can also rationalize similarly. ht…
I'm glad danah said something. But this is as dense and lengthy as the terms of service she admits the people using Crisis Text Line wouldn't read. https://twitter.com/...
Stripped of the description of soul-searching, this sounds remarkably similar to what employees at open source companies are told when Leadership decides to chase enterprise markets. https://twitter.com/...
The nonprofit mental-health hotline Crisis Text Line ended its data-sharing relationship with a for-profit spinoff company Monday, three days after @POLITICO reported on ethics and privacy concerns the arrangement had raised. https://www.politico.com/...
Oh give me a break I'm sick of this insider BS “ if you. Knew what i” No. Fuck you . what the entire HELL ARE WE DOING IN THIS SPACE IF WE THINK THATS AN EXCUSE? “If you had the info I had” is what Facebook says to US and we fundraise off it because it's A BAD ANSWER https://twit…
These two grafs from boyd explain how the “Grammarly for emotions” for profit subsidiary of CTL was justified. “not only was using texter data...without their explicit consent ethical, but that to not do this would be unethical” https://www.zephoria.org/... https://twitter.com/..…