Twitter causes alarm with removal of suicide prevention feature

Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who had been on a recently dissolved Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was “extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing”.

Even if it was only temporarily removed to make way for improvements, “normally you would be working on it in parallel, not removing it”, she said.

The sources with knowledge of Musk’s decision to order the removal of the feature declined to be named because they feared retaliation. One of them said millions of people had encountered #ThereIsHelp messages.

Twitter had launched some prompts about five years ago and some had been available in over 30 countries, according to company tweets. In one of its blog posts about the feature, Twitter had said it had responsibility to ensure users could “access and receive support on our service when they need it most”.

Alex Goldenberg, lead intelligence analyst at the non-profit Network Contagion Research Institute, said prompts that had shown in search results just days ago were no longer visible by Thursday.

He and colleagues in August published a study showing that monthly mentions on Twitter of some terms associated with self-harm increased by over 500 per cent from about the year before, with younger users particularly at risk when seeing such content.

Loading

“If this decision is emblematic of a policy change that they no longer take these issues seriously, that’s extraordinarily dangerous,” Goldenberg said. “It runs counter Musk’s previous commitments to prioritise child safety.”

Musk has said he wants to combat child sexual abuse content on Twitter and has criticised the previous ownership’s handling of the issue. But he has cut large portions of the teams involved in dealing with potentially objectionable material.

Reuters