TECHNOLOGY
Users searching for certain topics on Twitter have been pushed suicide prevention hotlines and other safety options.
Twitter's new owner Elon Musk, according to two sources, ordered the removal of a feature that offered suicide prevention hotlines and other safety options to users searching for specific information.
No prior mention of the withdrawal of the #ThereIsHelp function has been made. Searches for topics such as mental health, HIV, vaccinations, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural catastrophes, and freedom of speech have returned connections for support groups in numerous countries.
Threats to the safety of Twitter's most vulnerable users may increase if this feature is removed. Despite academics and human rights organisations tracking an increase in tweets containing racial slurs and other offensive material, Musk has stated that impressions, or views, of harmful information are dropping since he took charge in October and has posted graphs indicating a downward trend.
To now, Twitter and Musk have ignored requests for comment on the feature's withdrawal.
According to Reuters' interviews with two of the organisations advertised under #ThereIsHelp, AIDS United in Washington and iLaw in Thailand, both of which advocate for free speech, the withdrawal of the feature came as a shock.
According to AIDS United, between November 22 and December 18, an average of 70 people visited the website promoted by the Twitter feature. There have been 14 pageviews since then.
In a tweet sent on Friday, Damar Juniarto, executive director of Twitter partner Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, lamented the absence of the tool and warned that Twitter's "dumb acts" would cause his group to stop using the social media platform altogether.
Reuters was unable to determine why Musk might want this function removed. The people who were privy to his choice have been reluctant to come forward for fear of retribution, so we will refer to them only by their initials. One of them said that millions of people had seen tweets with the hashtag "#ThereIsHelp."
For Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who had been part of a now-defunct Twitter content advisory board, the deletion of #ThereIsHelp was "extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing."
She argued that "normally you would be working on it in parallel, not removing it" , even if the removal was just temporary.
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Twitter, Google, and Facebook, among others, have spent years attempting to connect users to reliable resource providers like government hotlines when they have reason to believe someone is in danger, in part owing to pressure from consumer safety organisations.
According to tweets from the firm, Twitter started rolling out its prompts about five years ago and made some of them accessible in more than thirty countries. Twitter had previously written on its site that it felt obligated to make sure its customers could "reach and get help on our service when they need it most."
After Musk's acquisition, the function was enhanced to include results from searches for information about natural disasters in Indonesia and Malaysia.
(With inputs from Twitter)
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