Twitter reinstates suicide prevention feature after temporarily removing it

Twitter says it’s working on bringing back the #ThereIsHelp banner, a feature that pointed users to suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources when searching for certain content. Friday’s announcement was: Reuters According to reports, the company had taken down the safety device earlier in the week due to Elon Musk’s orders.

After the outlet published its story, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed the removal but said it was temporary. “We have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that,” she told Reuters. “We expect to have them back up next week.”

Musk claimed that Twitter never removed the feature on Saturday morning. “The message is actually still up. This is fake news,” Musk wrote on Twitter, adding, “Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.” When Engadget tired searching for terms like “suicide” and “COVID-19” on Saturday afternoon, the banner did not appear.

Irwin said that Irwin was moving forward Reuters Twitter will adopt the Google approach. She said the company “does really well with these in their search results and [we] are actually mirroring some of their approach with the changes we are making.”

Some consumer safety advocates were critical of Twitter after the #ThereIsHelp banner disappeared, even though it was temporary. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, a former member of the company’s recently dissolved Trust and Safety council, told Reuters she found the event “extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing.” Rahman also pointed out companies typically work on safety features “in parallel,” leaving existing ones in place before replacing them.

The USA can be reached via the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline By dialing 988, or 800-273-8255