Musk contradicts Twitter's security chief and disavows his statement as 'fake news'

Expand Anadolu Agency / Contributor | Anadolu

Since The Verge reported that Twitter shut down its communications office, it's been harder to confirm information about the company, which seems to be how CEO Elon Musk likes it . However, increasingly, Twitter's trust and safety chief Ella Irwin seems more willing to confirm or deny the rumors to the media, a move that may irritate Musk. Over the holiday weekend, Musk tweeted to directly contradict a statement Irwin provided to Reuters, causing even more confusion about what is happening on Twitter and whether there is any tension between Musk and Irwin.

The timeline of conflicting statements was as follows: On Friday, December 23, Reuters reported that Twitter had apparently removed the #ThereIsHelp feature from the social media platform, which was designed to share suicide prevention resources with some content.

Shortly after the Reuters report was published, Irwin emailed Reuters to confirm that the feature had been "temporarily removed". She said it would be brought back this week, once Twitter was done "fixing and revamping our prompts".

"We know they're useful, and it wasn't our intention to permanently remove them," Irwin told Reuters.

The next day, at 6:27 a.m. on Christmas Eve, Musk tweeted to contradict Irwin's statement, saying the Reuters report was false and the feature had never been taken down. Shortly after, in another tweet, Musk called the Reuters report "fake news", while reminding Twitter users that "Twitter does not prevent suicide".

About 12 hours later, Reuters confirmed that the feature had been restored, continuing to contradict Musk's statement that the feature was never removed. This second report credited "two people familiar with the matter" as saying the #ThereIsHelp feature was down for two days and claiming the takedown order came from Musk.

As of this writing, it's still unclear which Twitter executive is telling the truth. A tweet linked to the initial Reuters report currently shows a community note concurring with Musk's claim that the report is false, suggesting that enough users rated Musk's claim above Irwin's. Musk did not respond to tweets from Legacy Blue Checks and Twitter Blue Verified Blue Checks, asking if he was calling Irwin a "liar" or planning to fire Irwin.

Twitter did not respond to Ars' request for clarification. Perhaps because of the holidays, Irwin has remained silent on Twitter; his last tweet was sent on December 20.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Irwin joined Twitter's trust and safety team last June, after holding similar positions at Google, Amazon and Twilio. She climbed to...