Lawmakers in Washington are prodding technology companies to take steps to limit the visibility and reduce the risks of a website that provides detailed instructions about suicide and has been linked to a trail of deaths.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce released a bipartisan statement on Monday requesting briefings from search engines, web-hosting companies and other tech companies whose services might have been used by the suicide site.
The statement from the panel was led by Representative Frank J. Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey.
A representative for Microsoft told The Times last week that the company had altered its search engine to lower the site's ranking. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, sent a letter to the companies on Monday asking them to remove the suicide site from their search results.
The Times identified 45 people who had spent time on the site and then killed themselves in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and Australia. Several of them were teenagers. More than 500 members of the site wrote goodbye threads, but never posted again, according to The Times.
Law enforcement officials in the country of Uruguay began an investigation into the website that was started by one of the men. The two men were administrators. The new administrator made the site private, meaning that the content, including discussions about suicide methods, messages of support and thumbs-up emojis to those sharing plans to take their lives, and even real-time posts written by members narrating their attempts, is now visible only to members.
Tech companies that lead people to the site, including search engines, have long been accused of not being accountable to the families of those who spent time there. The site draws six million page views a month, and nearly half of all traffic is driven by online searches, according to data from Similarweb.
A representative for Microsoft said that the company had taken action in response to The Times investigation and that the site had been ranked lower for most related searches.
Mr. Blumenthal wrote a letter to the chief executive of the search engine company, saying that the suicide site made the world a dark place for too many and that it had the ability and legal authority to steer people.
He wrote that the company has a responsibility to act.
In an email to The Times, a spokeswoman for the search engine refused to comment on the investigation or the senator's letter.
Mr. Blumenthal wrote a letter to Microsoft and made the same point. The Microsoft representative didn't make any more comments.
The operators of the suicide site have long used Cloudflare, an American firm that provides cyberprotections, to obscure the names of its web host, making it difficult or impossible to know what company is providing those services.
Australian government officials notified Cloudflare of the dangers of the suicide website. The parents of children who died while participating in the site asked Matthew Prince, the chief executive of Cloudflare, to stop providing its services, but he did not respond. Cloudflare did not respond to a request for comment.
The two men who started the site, using the online names Serge and Marquis, tried to hide their true identities. The Times used domain registration records and invoices, financial documents, other online activity, court records and interviews to reveal that they are Lamarcus Small and Diego Joaqun Galante.
Mr. Small did not have any involvement with the site. Mr. Galante acknowledged in an email that he had posted on the site as Serge, but denied that he was a founder or operator of it.
After the article was published, Marquis resigned as an administrator and deleted his account, and turned the site over to someone using the online name RainAndSadness.
Mr. Small and Mr. Galante resigned as administrators of several websites they operated for men who believe women will never have sex with them because of their looks and social status.
In response to a Times investigation, the police in Montevideo have begun an inquiry with the local prosecutor's office.
Many states in the United States have laws against assisting suicide, but they are often vague and not always enforced.
Criminal charges could be brought against members of the suicide site who post instructions on how to die by suicide. No American law enforcement officials have pursued such cases in connection with the website. Federal law protects website operators from liability.
