Members of the once-vaunted Fourth Estate are still on their “Tesla Man Bad” streak. But in this particular instance, they sunk lower than whale dung.
Reuters published a report on Saturday claiming Twitter removed a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines along with other features designed to help people dealing with mental health issues. The outlet reported:
The removal of the feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, had not been previously reported. It had shown at the top of specific searches contacts for support organizations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, COVID-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression.
Its elimination had led to increased concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users on Twitter. Musk has said that impressions, or views, of harmful content are declining since he took over in October and has tweeted graphs showing a downward trend, even as researchers and civil rights groups have tracked an increase in tweets with racial slurs and other hateful content.
Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, told Reuters that the company has “been fixing and revamping our prompts” and that the features were “temporarily removed” while conducting this maintenance.
In her email, 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 are making.”
But the story isn’t quite as cut and dried as Reuters suggested. Musk responded to the story, noting that the feature was still active on the platform. “False, it is still there,” he tweeted.
Lol. pic.twitter.com/7PUmV95AY8
— Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) December 24, 2022
In another report, Reuters said the company “restored” the feature instead of acknowledging it had not been removed.
But regardless of whether the feature had been temporarily removed, this is yet another low blow coming from the activist media. Those who have paid attention to activist media outlets like Reuters might be more inclined to believe Musk’s account – that it had never been removed. Given how the press has attacked those who do not adhere to progressivism, it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that the outlet was pushing a deceptive narrative.
However, even if the feature was down for a short period of time, this is not nearly as egregious as they would have us believe. But this didn’t stop leftists on Twitter from exploiting the story in their millionth attempt to undermine Musk. In essence, they were exploiting suicide victims in another cynical political attack against the CEO because of his stated goal of making Twitter into an actual free speech platform.
This isn’t the first time members of the activist media have gone this far. Only a few weeks ago, they were using the issue of child porn to attack Elon Musk despite the fact that he is actively working to curb the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material on the platform. If they are willing to exploit victims of child abuse, then it can’t be shocking that they would also use mental illness and suicide issues to attack their latest boogeyman.
Nevertheless, Musk has not backed down. He continues on the same trajectory despite the constant attacks. Even if and when he steps down as CEO, there can be no doubt he will still be pulling the strings as the owner of the company. At this point, it is hard to imagine how the left will go even lower than they have with this latest attack. But given how they have conducted themselves so far, they probably won’t disappoint.