Sources: Elon Musk had Twitter remove safety resources related to suicide, child sexual exploitation, and more; Twitter says they will return after a revamp
Twitter Inc removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking …
The subsequent restoration of the hotline feature shows Twitter reversed the immediate removal, but the related coverage frames it as part of a broader contraction in trust-and-safety capacity.
First-order effects
Users searching Twitter for suicide prevention, child sexual exploitation, and related help lose an embedded route to support resources until Twitter restores the feature.
Twitter must rebuild and relaunch the resource prompts under its promised revamp after removing them at Musk's direction, according to the sources and the company.
Second-order effects
Twitter's trust-and-safety team inherits another policy reversal while its global moderation and hate-speech functions are being cut, as later reported in coverage of further trust-and-safety layoffs.
Safety-resource providers lose a platform-distributed referral channel during the removal, making Twitter's implementation choices directly consequential to their reach on the service.
Third-order effects
Repeated owner-led reversals on both safety resources and account-promotion rules point toward a platform-governance model in which core safety and access policies are more centrally contestable and less institutionally stable.
If safety tooling is repeatedly revised alongside reductions in the teams that run it, Twitter's ability to treat resource prompts as durable public-interest infrastructure may weaken.
The trend: Twitter's policy shifts are concentrating control over safety and access rules in rapid owner-directed product decisions rather than stable trust-and-safety processes.
I think Musk has passed the event horizon of the Trump Feedback Loop: You make a series of decisions that alienate smart, competent people & attract a bunch of cranks, weirdos, and deranged halfwits. …
If this is true — that Musk ordered the removal of the suicide-prevention feature at Twitter — than he's even worse than I'd understood. https://www.reuters.com/...
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What kind of reckless sociopath removes suicide prevention tools during the holidays? It's absolutely heartless and shows Elon doesn't care about anyone but himself. https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.com/...
This honestly makes me more mad than anything else he has done. Twitter has removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
so like he wants more people to kill themselves? because there's literally no other possible reason to remove these features, none whatsoever - they don't take up extra server space or have any political meaning, it's just no longer doing the bare minimum to try to stop suicide h…
update: reuters has updated their story with comment from twitter's new head of trust & safety, who says they're working on it and it should be back up next week as someone in the replies pointed out, the holiday season (especially this week) is known to have high suicide rates h…
Reuters: Twitter removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, according to 2 people familiar with the matter who said it was ordered by Elon Musk. https://www.reuters.com/...
Twitter is making itself easy to sue by removing safety features that previously existed. It becomes very easy to demonstrate the service could have done more.
All decency and common sense issues aside this clearly opens up pretty huge lawsuits. But: we should be able to expect *some* decency and responsibility from social networks. Twitter is failing to clear a very low bar now. https://www.reuters.com/...
so tired. feel like the blacksmith's assistant who helped wrap blade handles and make sturdy sheaths and coach customers on blade safety. then the blacksmith sells all the blades to a drunk buddy who throws the sheaths in the mud and gives the knives to his kitten-hating bffs. ht…
Twitter has removed the suicide prevention feature under the order of @elonmusk during the most at-risk time of the year for people to consider or attempt self-harm and suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis, dial 988 immediately. https://www.reuters.com/...
This is the worst time of the year to remove the suicide prevention feature Instead of leaving a time gap without suicide prevention feature for a revamp, they could've kept the old prompt and replaced it with a new one when it's ready https://www.reuters.com/... https://twitter.…