Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/ CALIFORNIA: Twitter Inc. removed a feature that advertised suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users searching for specific content.
Two people with knowledge of twitters said that Elon Musk, the new owner, gave the order.
Ella Irwin, the head of trust and safety at Twitter, wrote to Reuters in an email following the publication of this story to say “We’ve been updating and improving our prompts. They were simply removed temporarily while we carried out that.” Next week, she predicted, “we should have them back up.”
There was no prior information about the feature’s removal, known as #ThereIsHelp. It had contacts for support groups in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters, and freedom of expression shown at the top of specific searches.
Concerns over the safety of Twitter’s most vulnerable users have grown since its removal. While researchers and civil rights organisations have noted an increase in tweets with racial slurs and other hateful content, Musk has said that impressions, or views, of harmful content, have decreased since he handed the twiiter in October and has tweeted graphs demonstrating a downward trend.
Internet businesses like Twitter, Google, and Facebook have long attempted to direct users toward well-known resource providers like government hotlines when they suspect someone may be in danger, in part as a consequence of pressure from consumer safety groups.
Twitter’s Irwin stated in her email that “Google does incredibly well with this in their search results and (we) are actually mirroring some of their approach with the modifications we are making.” We want to make sure that these prompts are working properly and remain current because we know they are helpful in many situations.
It was “very disconcerting and genuinely disturbing,” according to Eirliani Abdul Rahman, a member of a recently disbanded Twitter content advisory board, that #ThereIsHelp had vanished.
Even if it was only momentarily taken out of the picture to make room for upgrades, “usually you would be working on it in parallel, not taking it out,” she noted. iLaw, a Thai organization noted for support of freedom of expression, and AIDS United, a Washington-based organization that was advertised under #ThereIsHelp, both told Reuters on Friday that they were surprised by the feature’s withdrawal.
A website that the Twitter feature connected to had roughly 70 views each day until December 18, according to AIDS United. It has received 14 views overall since then.
The executive director of Twitter partner Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, Damar Juniarto, tweeted on Friday about the lack of a feature and warned that the social media platform’s “dumb acts” would force his organisation to stop using it.
The sources who were aware of Musk’s decision to direct the feature’s removal declined to be identified out of concern for retaliation. One of them said that #ThereIsHelp messages had been seen by millions of people.
According to company postings, Twitter debuted certain prompts around five years ago, and some of them were accessible in over 30 countries. Twitter stated that it had a duty to make sure customers could “reach and receive support on our service when they need it most” in one of its blog entries about the feature.
Prompts that had appeared in search results just a few days before, according to Alex Goldenberg, lead intelligence analyst at the nonprofit Network Contagion Research Institute, had disappeared by Thursday.
He and colleagues performed a study in August demonstrating that, compared to a year earlier, the number of monthly mentions on Twitter of specific phrases related to self-harm surged by almost 500%. Younger users were found to be particularly at risk when exposed to such information.
It would be extremely risky, according to Goldenberg, if this decision served as a sign that the administration no longer takes these problems seriously. It contradicts Musk’s prior statements that he will put child safety first.
Musk has criticized the previous owner’s handling of the matter and stated that he wants to stop child sexual abuse content on Twitter. However, he has eliminated a sizable chunk of the teams responsible for handling potentially offensive content.
