When someone Googles “running shoes,” they see pages of ads. But when someone tells Google they’re going to kill themselves—as 47 Million Americans do every year—they often see none.

Why? It’s not because Google ads don’t help suicidal people.

To prove it, I ran an experiment to see if suicidal people on Google could be helped by an ad. As I wrote in The New York Times, 1 out 3 people who told Google they were suicidal, and then clicked my ad, called a suicide hotline.

—————

For 10 years, I was a Google marketer. Now I serve ads to Google users in “unmonetizable desperation,” including people who tell Google they’re going to do a mass shooting, join ISIS, or use heroin.

The data they leave behind when they click an ad is a microscope. It allows the viewer a new way to see society’s maladies. But most who need this data don’t know where to look for it, how to interpret it, or that the microscope even exists.

Through writing and speaking about this subject, I hope to change that.

Subscribe to my stories on Substack