NEW YORK: Twitter has reinstated a feature that promotes suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking for certain content, amid pressure from some users and user safety groups to remove it. After I came
JEE News reported on Friday that the feature was removed a few days ago, citing two people familiar with the matter who said the removal was ordered by Elon Musk, the social media platform’s new owner. .
After the story was published, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed the removal and described it as temporary.
Irwin said in an email to JEE News that Twitter was fixing compatibility, improving the size of message prompts and correcting outdated prompts. “We know they are effective and our intention was not to eliminate them permanently.”
About 15 hours after the initial report, Musk, who initially did not respond to requests for comment, tweeted “False, it’s still there.” In response to criticism from Twitter users, he also tweeted “Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.”
The feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, places a banner above search results for certain topics. She has registered contacts for aid organizations in several countries on mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
As of Saturday, the banner returned searches about suicide and domestic violence in several countries such as “shtwt,” shorthand for “self-harm tweeter.”
It was not clear if the feature was restored for other categories. The feature wasn’t showing up for some search queries that Twitter previously said triggered it, such as “#HIV.”
Irwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Twitter prohibits users from encouraging self-harm, although consumer protection groups have criticized the company for allowing posts that they say violate the policy.
On Saturday, tweets showed graphic images of people cutting off their arms under banners looking for self-harm.
The disappearance of #ThereIsHelp prompted some consumer protection groups and Twitter users to express concerns about the welfare of the platform’s vulnerable users.
Due to pressure from such groups, Internet services including Twitter, Alphabet’s Google and Meta’s Facebook have for years tried to direct users to reputable resource providers for security issues.
In his email on Friday, Twitter’s Irwin said, “Google works very well with them in their search results and (we’re) actually reflecting some of their perspective in what we’re doing. “
“Google delivers highly relevant messages based on search terms, they’re always current and properly optimized for both mobile and web,” he added.
Erliani Abdulrahman, who was on Twitter’s recently disbanded content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was “deeply troubling” and that removing a feature entirely to fix it was unusual. .
