UnNews:UnNews puts anti-suicide app on reporters' phones
| Where man always bites dog | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, April 25, 2024, 02:22:59 (UTC) |
| UnNews puts anti-suicide app on reporters' phones | 
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2 April 2022
WIKIA CITY, California -- UnNews has force-installed a suicide-prevention app on its reporters' phones, in view of the apparent abysmal morale at the agency.
In a post to employees' talk pages that warned that the app would be arriving, Editor-in-Chief Morris Greeley asked to be informed of any UnNews writers who talked about taking their own lives, so that he could block them from editing. The app asks users suicide-related questions such as how many times in the last week they have slit their wrists. Too many wrong answers and the user's name is given to management for disciplinary proceedings.
The moves follow those at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Like ICE, many UnNews writers say they feel they are "under siege from critics of the mission." One writer, commenting anonymously out of fear of retribution, said they "came to UnNews to write authoritative articles on current events" but that their work is always being modified by superiors who demand that everyone "write funny stuff."
Greeley stated that use of the app is voluntary and no data would be collected. That would make it one of the few initiatives of a large bureaucracy that is not linked to any effort to see if it worked. However, one UnNews writer who uninstalled the app stated that it re-installed itself. Bureau chiefs in several cities said they fear loss of funding if their bureau reports too few suicide candidates. Tokyo bureau chief H. Kiri reportedly killed two of his writers and tried to make them look like suicides.
The Uncyclopedia news service has been called "adrift" for years, its writers facing "namespace discrimination" in the selection of Featured Articles, and called on to perform drudgery like welcoming newbies, correcting their typo's, and performing Pee Reviews. Poor morale is said to be epidemic. However, management's current initiative — to suggest there is something wrong with the writer — could be the key to a solution.
Sources[edit]
- Stephen Dinan "ICE force-installed a suicide prevention app on employees’ phones". Washington Times (paywall), March 31, 2022