Elon Musk ordered Twitter to remove suicide-prevention prompts

Elon Musk ordered Twitter to remove an anti-suicide feature on the microblogging social media platform. The feature, that showed prompts related to suicide-prevention and anti-self harm hotlines in at least 30 countries worldwide, was no more available starting Thursday evening, Reuters reported. 

What was Twitter's anti-suicide feature?

The feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, showed at the top of specific searches contacts for support organisations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.

What does its elimination mean?

Its elimination could add to concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users on Twitter. Civil Rights advocates in the past few months have reported an increase in tweets with racial slurs and other hateful content, despite Musk's contrary claims.

The removal of the feature has created ripples of concerns among civil rights and mental health advocates in parts of the world. Washington-based Aids United, which was promoted in #ThereIsHelp, and iLaw, a Thai group featured over freedom of expression support, both told Reuters on Friday that the disappearance of the feature was a surprise to them.

Twitter had launched now-removed prompts about five years ago, according to company tweets. In one of its blog posts about the feature from its pre-Elon Musk days, Twitter had said it had responsibility to ensure users could "access and receive support on our service when they need it most".