Using (only) corpomedia to announce information at government level should be illegal.
That’s why no official service should use commercial social media.
I wonder why such an important piece of info is posted on social media but not on a dedicated webpage that can be linked to any social media posts.
Yay, privatization? Just post it to a social media platform so the official org doesn’t have to dedicate IT resources or further effort to it?
Social media has a very good ratio of information spreading versus effort required. It’s also why it’s a popular thing for misinformation and influence campaigns.
In contrast, if a government agency wants to make a website for this, it probably needs a proposal, budget request, approval by a commission, a bidding process, and other bureaucatic procedures put in place by politicians that wanted to lower spending.
And we got news like this.
Addition: Difficult, cumbersome, and bureaucratic to do doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it. Those are just purely excuses.
And remember the attempt to abandon AM radio as a standard for diseminating emergency information.
I mean, it’s not like people would check that dedicated webpage on their own, and they are less likely to click on that webpage to get the additional details. Just put it on the platform most people are using and don’t add extra steps to see what’s needed.
If they’re looking to Xitter it could be copy/pasted instead, but then updates get harder to manage.
Just put it on the platform most people are using and don’t add extra steps to see what’s needed.
Most, but not all people should be a deal breaker for a public service announcement.
That was my take. Still is, but was before, too, although I have concerns about it. I don’t even use xitter. It’s an unfortunate conundrum and I don’t know the answer. We are clearly seeing the results of channeling government communications through private platforms where information can be gatekept. But what’s the alternative? I agree that the government website should be the primary source and private platforms the secondary source, but, much in the way US-market cars hide the “real” tail lights in/under the trunk in order to put “aux” tail lights on moving trunk/tailgate panels, that’s just not how the general public will use it.
People want to be entertained. Getting info through private media is the most we can hope for. People don’t want to get real news media, let alone their local government’s attempt at a blog site. I know we get amber alerts direct from the cell network to some unique software on phones, but I imagine rolling out some more-frequent alert system will cause a ton of privacy/freedom backlash crying about being one goosestep away from China.
But what’s the alternative?
Posting the information on an official page and creating links with summaries on social media.
I mean fuck X, sure, but why is the police posting crucial information on a commercial, privately moderated platform? Why would you just assume everyone has an account with Musk’s service?
I’ve seen this shit in Europe too - with everyone just assuming you’ll have WhatsApp. At least most EU governments don’t use it exclusively, but I’m certain countries, like Turkey, WhatsApp is the only channel where information can often be found.
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This is part of the fall of Twitter.
There were two paths for Twitter, in the eyes of many idealistic people like me. One path was something terrible like what happened with Musk. The second path was one that treated it as a public commons of the world.
That second path is how many grew to understand Twitter during its rise and peak. This is why there are so many situations where various public and governmental groups used it as a notification feed/system.
You can go on about how they should just start their own ActivityPub based solution, or move to bluesky or whatever. But it’s not that simple for all of them. Nor are all of the groups involved in posting these feeds technically savvy to do so. Twitter made it easy, and it made sense.
The article could have easily been just as absurd if it was about how people didn’t get the alert because the alerts were moved to a mastodon instance and people are upset because they don’t want to have to go through the trouble of picking a server. heh.
It’s so unfortunate that Twitter went this way. No more free and easy api, no more third party apps and tools. No more expectation that everyone is there. No more expectation that public alerts make sense there.
Yes, centralizing all of this is a big problem. And musk is just one example of why. But, it could have gone the other way.
Why can’t they just put the information in the alert directly? That’s what the Koreans did when I was there. Why this extra indirection in the first place?
That’s what happens in my part of the US as well.
Twitter is hot garbage, that’s only gotten worse since Elon took over, but this is really just a problem with government agencies/departments using social media websites as primary avenues of delivering information.
“Stat tuned for an important Government Announcement!”
Deposit $1 to continue
The mobile carriers and device OEM’s already participate directly in the Amber alert program. Why is X even part of this?
The problem isn’t the alert itself, it’s that cops put Twitter links in the alert. If you want to see what the car, suspect, or victim look like, you need to be able to access Twitter.
Police have been doing this for years now. It’s a fast a cheap way to microblog without buying or supporting something with the city’s budget.
Why the hell doesn’t FBI or some other fed agency create tools for shit like this? Why is every city reinventing the wheel?
Because they dont allow marijuana users in government jobs
Can’t have those ticket funds going to digital infrastructure when you gotta get up armored trucks to deal with protesters.
Yes this happened to me and my wife.
Alert came in one the phone (screaming at us really) then when you clicked on the notification. Bam blocked because we didn’t have a twitter account.
That’s because conservatives are pedophiles who sex-traffic children.
If we’re going by outcomes alone, it seems very likely.
This has been annoying me as well, so many city services got used to just using twitter and then Elon took over and now you just can’t find out about things unless you have an X account. Shortly after the change to X I drove hours to use a hiking trail that was closed - I checked the conditions on the park service’s website, but it was using a twitter feed and the top post was “trail is open, come on in!” because it had been changed to show the top post of all time instead of the newest post.
There should be some non-profit funded by cities that’s basically just a webpage where cities can post important info, or maybe they can have their own mastodon node.
People complain about being annoyed by amber alerts on their phones anyway
Ironically, when I tried to load Wired’s story about this travesty, Wired quickly hid the content with pop-over asking me to subscribe.
I haven’t been able to even* load* Facebook or X because of some privacy/security setting I must have enabled. Before that fb wouldn’t let me see anything without an account and X was pulling really similar stunts, requiring an account for full access, although usually you could read the tweet and a few replies maybe.
It is absolutely bullshit for ALL the information to be on a social media post. I’ve definitely gotten them before with age and suspect/vehicle or something, and Twitter would have photos and further details like last seen location and clothes.
Wait until you install JShelter and Cloudflare refuse access
