this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024

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X Kicked Off 2024 by Screwing Up During Japan's Earthquake Emergency (www.vice.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As misinformation proliferated on X thanks to verified users, a massive account sharing accurate information hit its Musk-imposed posting limit.

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (28 children)

Twitter did eventually get its shit together and lift the API limits on NERV’s accounts, but people on JP Twitter were furious, and “Elon” in Japanese (イーロン) was trending, with people basically cussing him out for effing up Twitter by limiting NERV and getting rid of the chronological timeline. Folks were also upset at all the “reply zombies” (blue check bot accounts) commenting complete garbage like “nice” and “happy new year” in posts about the earthquake.

As for misinformation, the evening of the quake “人工地震” (manmade earthquake) was trending on Twitter, and NHK news yesterday actually had a segment on last night explaining that no, the quake was not manmade, and that misinformation was being spread on Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

Where there Angels emerging from the epicenter of the earthquakes?

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The idea that centralized social media should serve as an emergency broadcasting system is....a bad one. It's only guarantee is that ads are to be served alongside propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

People are too stupid. Think of how we don't teach dolphins tricks, just harness the ones they already know. Can't convince people to download a "save your life" app. Have to just take advantage of what they're willing

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

mass sms to everyone work, and there's even a whole "emergency alert" system built into both Android and ios. it's used all the time in America for things like missing children.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You can turn off emergency alerts though. And you can't get them back after they've been dismissed from your phone.

[–] xycu 1 points 11 months ago

Android retains emergency alerts for the lifetime of the phone, even after they've been viewed/dismissed. They can be seen in the settings app under emergency alert history.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Well I would like a federal app that had Federal, state, and city only feeds. But that would cost money and people hate taxes. Don't need your real name, read only and can get push notifications and see what is going on in the state, city.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Too bad they don't just open their own instance and post there, unlimited. It was always a bad idea to put public safety information channels in private hands.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

They have their own Mastodon instance and have since 2017. They also have an app. They were telling people to get the app once they realized they were being API limited.

But people in Japan have trusted Twitter for emergency info since the big Tohoku earthquake and still go there for information. Elon wrecked that trust.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Its maddening how hard it is to get people to move socials. Maybe this will be the People's wake up call. It really illustrates the point that most people just want to be where everyone else is.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

This is true, and I also think the 'lack of an algorithm' keeps many people away. While many of us don't want to be force fed a list of 'for you' messages, a lot of people are hoping to get traction for viral tweets and build an audience of people who will get/read/respond to their posts, and that engagement doesn't exist on Mastodon in the same way.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

That is a great point that I personally have never heard. A lot of these people want to be influencers. They want to be paid to have a following and post stuff. Thats not possible here, at least not in the same way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

That's one thing that I have noticed and appreciated about both Fediverse and Mastodon: they're boring.

And I mean this in the most positive way. Commercialized social media has zeroed in on the 'ol dopamine pump to move content around. This place is full of interesting articles, discussions, and even shitposts, but it all lacks the sheer eyeball-grabbing, visceral pleasure provoking, potential of the bad stuff. It's like going on a diet or kicking a bad habit. Instead of doom-scrolling or looking at piles of cat memes all day, you just kind of get "full" and go do something more productive with your time. It's fantastic.

But that's also at odds with "viral" content. It seems that, for now at least, thought provoking, genuinely interesting, and well produced content gets the most traction. Call me regressive, but I see this as a feature and it's no wonder that folks will keep away because of it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A lot of these people are utterly hopeless. I went into a really bad argument with a fellow creator for daring to suggest them to at least try the fediverse, even after Twitter nazis harassed them.

One another issue is the paid blue checkmark's effect on making one invest even more into the platform, which is needed to avoid your reach being completely borked.

Meamwhile I completely discontinued my engine's own account there in favor of a Mastodon account ( @PixelPerfectEngine ), and I only visit Twitter for the few creators that didn't make the jump.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I'm mostly shocked they've had their own instance sinxe 2017. You aren't goinf to get people who are on socials to make money to move here until it reaches a certain saturation point. Even then, unless theres a way to monetize the views that whole influencer culture won't come here. Maybe thats a good thing, I dont want monetization here.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Glad to hear they've taken the right steps. Hopefully it's still running when/if they can get the people to shift over.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A public utility shouldn’t depend on a for-profit platform

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago

I think the problem is people use Twitter as a public utility instead of there actually being a public utility. I can only speak to the US but I think all we've got is mass notifications for emergencies.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Individual countries should start seizing twitters servers and running their own local version that anyone in the world can participate in.

This way they can insure mongrel trash like musk can't interfere with emergency notices.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No need to seize anything. Deploy a Government Mastodon instance and run a PSA informing the public that the Mastodon is the official channel for emergency communications.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Germanys government has a own mastodon instance up and running. And while different institutions moved away from Twitter over there, citizen do not follow because "there is nobody using mastodon I know" or "mastodon is too complicated"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

People don't need to use it as their micro-blogging platform, they just need to know that a site like govern.xy is the authoritative source of alerts. Mastodon's default timeline for non-logged visitors is simple enough for visitors to understand and get the information they need.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I agree with your solution wholeheartedly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I'd be laughing if I wasn't horrified.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't see why they would rely on Twitter to begin with.

All phones can receive emergency broadcast messages over GSM and wifi. You don't need Twitter for communication in emergencies.

And I don't get why phones don't have pager tech built into them by default, it's ancient and simple and works at longer ranges, so even if cell reception gets spotty, you'd have an extra layer to keep things going.

Don't rely on internet services, especially those owned by some third party run by an entitled rich jackass, for emergency services and messaging.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Because no one implements it properly.

I have manually modified the OS on my phone to disable all emergency notifications because of all the amber alert and similar spam.

Emergency alerts should ONLY be used for a national emergency that can impact 10,000+ people, we have public news anchors and shit for a reason and constantly waking people up with either real or fake alerts is beyond infuriating, especially when the government hires wholly inept morons who don't know how to localize the alerts to the area affected and instead send these alerts to an entire province or state.

I use defense related boards and sites to track anything major in geopolitics and weather sites for anything serious going on in the atmosphere.

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