Elon Musk refutes reports of Twitter removing suicide prevention feature

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has pushed for yet another change on the microblogging platform after introducing the "View count" feature. A Twitter feature intended to divert those considering suicide has reportedly been removed on Elon Musk's orders, according to Reuters.
 
With this feature, users looking for specific content were promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources, Reuters quoted two people familiar with the deletion as saying.
 
However, Musk on Twitter termed Reuters' story as false and claimed that the feature is still there. He tweeted, “False, it is still there.”

 
Twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin told Reuters 'we have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that.'
 
"We expect to have them back up next week," she added further.
 
The #ThereIsHelp feature displayed the phone numbers of support groups in nations related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters, and freedom of expression at the top of specific searches.
 
Concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users have grown since the suicide prevention feature was removed. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, a member of a recently disbanded Twitter content advisory group, told Reuters that the removal of #ThereIsHelp was "extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing."
 
Even since Musk took over Twitter, he has implemented a number of policy changes, introduced new features, and laid off employees, prompting widespread criticism. He tweeted graphs in October demonstrating a decrease in harmful content views since he took over. Researchers and civil rights organisations, on the other hand, have observed an increase in tweets containing racial slurs and other hateful content.

Last week, he shared a Twitter poll asking if he should' step down as CEO of Twitter, promising to follow the poll's results. The majority of users voted in favour of his resignation. He promised to resign as soon as he found someone foolish enough to take the job'.

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