After Elon Musk bought Twitter, many serious changes began to occur in the social media platform. After the changes in the company structure, some of the features of Twitter were also changed. Some of these changes were withdrawn after negative reviews.
The micro-blogging site has now come to the fore with the withdrawal of another change. The hotline feature, which was allegedly removed from Twitter in the past few days, has returned after moderated backlash on the subject.
Twitter says it has “temporarily” removed the feature: So what did this feature do, why was it discussed?
Twitter’s feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, launched five years ago, gave Twitter users directions in many countries and in many languages on how to get help when they searched for certain topics. These included sensitive topics such as mental health, HIV, Covid-19, vaccines, child abuse, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
According to an article in Reuters on Friday, Twitter has deprecated this feature. The reason for the removal was Elon Musk’s order, according to Reuters “sources close to the matter”.
After the news was published, new statements came from Musk and Twitter. Ella Irwin, responsible for Twitter’s security and reliability, confirmed that the feature has been removed, but stated that this situation is temporary. Irwin stated that the feature has been temporarily disabled as part of the fix process.
Musk, on the other hand, denied the claim that the feature was removed directly, and claimed that the news made by Reuters was fake news. Musk, who tweeted on the subject, said, “1. The message actually still stands. This is fake news. 2. Twitter does not prevent suicides.” used the phrases.
In the criticisms received, it was stated that Twitter, even temporarily, removed this feature during one of the most critical periods of the year, while it was stated that the feature could be fixed or replaced with a new one without removing it. Alex Goldenberg, the head of the nonprofit Network Contagion Research Institute, says the frequency of searches for topics involving self-harm, especially by young Twitter users, has increased 5x year over year, and that the decision to remove the feature is incredibly dangerous if it means a policy change. .
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