Elon Musk shut down claims that Twitter had removed suicide prevention measures on the heels of a report suggesting certain safety features were no longer active on the platform.
“The message is actually still up. This is fake news,” Musk said Saturday in response to a tweet containing the article, which has since been deleted.
“Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide,” the 51-year-old billionaire added.
The alleged disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was initially reported by Reuters earlier this week. Citing two anonymous sources, the news outlet reported that Musk ordered the removal of the features, which provide contact information for support organizations after users search for issues related to a range of topics, including suicide and mental health as well as sexual exploitation, vaccines and HIV, among others.
The article was published Friday and the backlash was swift, with Aids United saying a webpage the Twitter feature linked to attracted about 70 views a day until Dec. 18. Since then, it has drawn 14 views in total.
Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, later confirmed the feature was down, explaining that engineers “have been fixing and revamping our prompts.”
“They were just temporarily removed while we do that,” she said in a previous email to Reuters. “We expect to have them back up next week.”
Musk then took to Twitter to dismiss the report altogether less than 24 hours later.
As of Saturday afternoon, a search of self-harm content and similar posts triggered a banner with suicide prevention hotlines and other organizations.
The #ThereIsHelp feature was introduced by Twitter, in part due to pressure from consumer safety groups, before Musk’s takeover. The Tesla tycoon in October formally acquired the platform for $44 billion and immediately started making changes. After dismissing the company’s top executives, Musk dissolved the board and then fired about half of the staff.
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