People searching for suicide-related terms on Twitter will be able to see how to reach a suicide prevention helpline again at the top of the search results. The social network had deactivated the referral last week, but reactivated it after complaints.
According to insiders, Twitter owner Elon Musk has personally ordered the removal of the banners that appear above search results in some situations, the news agency reported. Reuters the day before Christmas. Musk did not initially respond to this.
He later claimed in a tweet suddenly that the message would be wrong, because the function would work. But at the time Ella Irwin, head of trust and security at Twitter, had already confirmed the disappearance of the application, known as #ThereIsHelp. You underline that this is a temporary intervention due to the maintenance of the platform.
There has been criticism of Twitter’s handling of the whole matter from various quarters. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who was part of a recently disbanded Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was “extremely distressing”.
Even when it was really temporary maintenance, Twitter acted strangely, he says. Normally you’ll be working on improvements behind the scenes while the old version still works, she explained.
The researcher found that suicide prevention was gone
The question was raised by Alex Goldenberg, a researcher at the Network Contagion Research Institute. He found on Thursday that Twitter suddenly stopped listing suicide prevention helplines after some search results. This shocked him.
Goldenberg and his colleagues released another study in August that showed the use of suicide-related terms had increased more than 500 percent from a year earlier.
Chaos on Twitter since the takeover by Elon Musk
Since Musk took over Twitter earlier this year, chaos has reigned in the social media company. The Tesla boss has fired more than half of the staff. He also introduced a new version of the subscription service which has led to abuse. Musk has also sought a fight with Apple and has seen many advertisers back out for the time being.
The volatile politics is particularly surprising. Musk wants to make Twitter a bastion of free speech. However, critics fear that hate speech could be spread more easily because of his intervention.
Are you thinking about suicide? You are not alone. Contact 113 Prevention of suicide at no www.113.nl or call 113 (local rate) or 0800-0113 (free).
