Twitter restores suicide prevention feature after pressure from users, consumer safety groups
- Feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, lists support details for organisations related to issues such as mental health, child sexual exploitation, gender-based violence
- Its elimination had sparked concerns about well-being of vulnerable Twitter users, but platform owner Musk says feature is still there
Twitter Inc restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, after coming under pressure from some users and consumer safety groups over its removal.
Reuters reported on Friday that the feature was taken down a few days ago, citing two people familiar with the matter, who said the removal was ordered by the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk.
After publication of the story, Twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin confirmed the removal and called it temporary. “We have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that,” Irwin said in an email to Reuters.
“We expect to have them back up next week,” she said.
About 15 hours after the initial report, Musk, who did not initially respond to requests for comment, tweeted “False, it is still there.” In response to criticism by Twitter users, he also tweeted “Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.”