this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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Emergency office criticized for sending people to Twitter for Storm Poly updates (nltimes.nl)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Members of Parliament reacted with incomprehension to a warning message from the NL-Alert system that was sent to people in Noord-Holland about the severe storm that struck on Wednesday. People were directed to Twitter for news and updates about the storm, while that medium has been inaccessible to people without an account since last weekend.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but is there something else (that currently exists) they can use that would get as many eyeballs on the alert?

What advantage does social media have over a basic website, other than the ability to spread through engagement? In a situation like this, I see no practical reason why they're not directing people to a government site along with social media.

I think the answer is just basic laziness, because it's easier to have some intern send a tweet than update a website, so we're offloading necessary functions to mercurial and unreliable capitalists. And that always ends well.....

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The main advantage is that people would get the alerts as notifications from the app. It's not much different than sending alerts by email or SMS which are also privately controlled. But, those systems have maintained a reliable amount of freedom where as Twitter has gone off the deep end.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Its not much different than sending alerts by email or SMS which are also privately controlled.

See, this is where you're right, but very wrong. You are correct in that text and email are privately controlled, but they arent comparable to Twitter - in scale, composition and ownership.

Email and SMS are open protocols that are not controlled by any one group, and the systems are all interoperable and open standards control how they work. Twitter is a privately controlled platform with no visibility into how it works, no interoperability with other services. The better comparison would be email and SMS to the fediverse.

But, those systems have maintained a reliable amount of freedom where as Twitter has gone off the deep end.

That goes back to openness, standardization, and interoperability of email/SMS. Because of all those items, no one person can disrupt communication because there's no central control.