Reuters reported that the feature was removed from Twitter a few days ago, citing two people familiar with the matter, who said the removal was ordered by the social media platform's new owner, Elon Musk.
Twitter has restored a suicide prevention feature after coming under pressure from some users and consumer protection groups to remove it, according to news agency Reuters.
Reuters reported that the feature was removed a few days ago, citing two people familiar with the matter, who said the removal was ordered by the social media platform's new owner, Elon Musk.
However, Musk dismissed the Reuters reports as false and even claimed that the feature still exists. He tweeted, "Liar, still is."
Following publication of the story, Ella Irwin, Twitter's head of trust and safety, confirmed the removal and described it as temporary.
In an email to Reuters, Irwin said Twitter was fixing relevancy, optimizing message sizes, and fixing out-of-date prompts. "We know they are useful and it was not our intention to put them down permanently."
The takedown of the new feature - known as #ThereIsHelp - was not previously reported.
It also showed top specific search contacts for support organizations in several countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual abuse, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression, Reuters reported.
It is not clear whether this facility was restored for other categories. The feature was not appearing for some search queries that Twitter previously said were relevant, such as "#HIV."
Irwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The disappearance of #ThereIsHelp prompted some consumer protection groups and Twitter users to express concern about the well-being of vulnerable users of the platform.
Reuters reported that partly due to pressure from such groups, Internet services including Twitter, Alphabet's Google and Meta's Facebook have for years tried to send users to resource providers well-known for security issues.
In his email on Friday, Twitter's Irwin said, "Google does really well with these in their search results and (we) are actually mirroring some of their approach with the changes we're making."
"Google provides highly relevant message prompts based on search terms, they are always up to date and optimally optimized for both mobile and web," he added.
Erliani Abdul Rahman, who was on the recently disbanded Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was "extremely troubling" and that it was unusual to completely remove a feature in order to improve it.
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