Twitter Inc has reinstated a feature that promotes suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources for users looking up specific content after being pressured by some users and consumer advocacy groups to have it removed.
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 new owner Elon Musk.
After the story is published Twitter Trust and Security Chief Ella Irwin confirmed the removal, calling it temporary.
Twitter has “fixed relevancy, optimized prompt size, and fixed stale prompts,” Irwin told Reuters in an email. “We know they’re useful, and it wasn’t our intention to shut them down permanently.”
About 15 hours after the initial report, Musk, who initially didn’t respond to requests for comment, tweeted “Wrong, it’s still there.” In response to criticism from Twitter users, he also tweeted, “Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.”
Known as #ThereIsHelp, the feature places a banner at the top of search results for specific topics. It has listed contacts for aid organizations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
On Saturday, the banner returned to searches for suicide and domestic violence in several countries under terms like “shtwt,” an acronym for “Twitter self-harm.”
It was not clear whether the function was restored for other categories. The feature didn’t appear on some searches that Twitter previously said triggered it, such as: e.g. “#HIV”.
Irwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Twitter bans users from promoting self-harm, although consumer groups have criticized the company for allowing posts they say violate the policy.
Tweets with graphic images of people cutting off their arms in a search for self-harm appeared under banners on Saturday.
The disappearance of #ThereIsHelp had prompted some consumer groups and Twitter users to raise concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users of the platform.
Partly under pressure from such groups, Internet services such as Twitter, Alphabet’s Google, and Meta’s Facebook have tried for years to refer users to well-known information providers for security issues.
In her Friday email, Twitter’s Irwin said, “Google is doing these really well in their search results and (we) are actually reflecting some of their approach with the changes we’re making.”
She added, “Google provides highly relevant news prompts based on search terms, they’re always up-to-date and appropriately optimized for both mobile and web.”
Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who was a member of a recently disbanded Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was “extremely disturbing” and that it was unusual to completely remove a feature in order to overhaul it.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
