Reuters manages Twitter
2022.12.24 12:13
Reuters manages Twitter
Budrigannews.com – (NYSE:) Twitter Inc. Following pressure from some users and consumer safety groups, a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up specific content was restored.
Two people who are familiar with the situation told Reuters on Friday that the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, ordered the removal of the feature a few days ago.
Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed the removal and referred to it as “temporary” after the story was published. Our prompts have been fixed and updated. In an email to Reuters, Irwin stated, “They were just temporarily removed while we do that.”
She stated, “We anticipate having them back up next week.”
Musk, who initially did not respond to requests for comment, tweeted “False, it is still there” approximately fifteen hours after the initial report. He also tweeted, “Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide,” in response to user criticism.
A banner appeared at the top of search results for certain subjects thanks to the feature, which was codenamed #ThereIsHelp. It provided a list of contacts for support organizations in a number of nations that deal with issues such as mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters, and freedom of speech.
Some consumer protection groups and Twitter users had expressed concerns about the safety of vulnerable platform users since its removal.
Internet services like Twitter and Alphabet (NASDAQ:) have come under pressure in part because of consumer safety groups. Google and Meta’s Facebook have been attempting for a number of years to direct users to well-known resource providers like government hotlines when they have a suspicion that a person may be in danger of harming themselves or others.
“Google does really well with these in their search results and (we) are actually mirroring some of their approach with the changes we are making,” Twitter’s Irwin wrote in an email.
“We know these prompts are useful in many cases, just want to make sure they are functioning properly and continue to be relevant,” she continued.
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The disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was described as “extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing” by Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who was a member of a Twitter content advisory group that had recently been disbanded.
She stated that “normally you would be working on it in parallel, not removing it,” even if it was only temporarily removed to make room for enhancements.
