this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Finally. The other day while I was on a call with my girlfriend, she received an emergency alert on her phone (in the US) and wasn't able to read it / find the message for some reason. Fearing the worst, I rushed to the city's emergency Twitter account to see any updates, only for twitter to ask me to f-ing log in.
What a terrible feeling to have while going to the password manager, hands trembling with fear trying to sign in to the bloody & now-bastardized platform. Thankfully, it was just something related to bad weather.
It's absolute insanity that something like government emergency alerts get broadcast via an unregulated, privately owned, privately run for-profit service that answers to absolutely nobody.
One would hope that this episode would bring about some rethinking, but realistically, the reaction now is probably going to be "whew, crisis averted, let's change nothing and continue exactly as before."
Why it is a bad idea to offer public services on a for profit platform: A case study
Yeah, I've thought for a while now that these social media sites (along with utilities) should be publicly run rather than by for profit private companies (or publically traded).
Too bad we don't really have a healthy public domain to run things like that. The fediverse is trying to do that by reducing the admins' power, but it's still a bunch of private instances that act public at the whim of their admins.
True but the difference is the ability to choose what you deem best. The government could simply run their own instances with their own rules (the german public television runs a mastodon instance for example) and supply information/services as they see fit.
It is irrelevant what other instance owners do or think about it because the instance owner is in control.
I wonder where city municipal Twitter accounts will move to for emergency communications now that Twitter is quickly becoming useless and irrelevant.
I'd really love if state actors moved from Twitter to something like NOSTR. The server relays would be cheap for municipalities to run and manage and it wouldn't be tied to a private corporation. Kinda like how some EU countries had schools and departments move away from Office to FOSS alternatives.
ActivityPub or whatever BlueSky calls theirs could end up being the perfect protocols for truly Public online spaces, managed by governments in the same sense that they manage public meatspace
I am sympathetic to the frustrations people are having around private corporations owning & controlling something as important to communications as social media. & when these companies are run by CEOs who are... suspect, it's a reminder about just how fickle and agnostic to user experience their ecosystems really are. I mean in some sense, that's why we're here on the fediverse now, & not somewhere else. But I very much do not want the administration of public online spaces and networks to be the responsibility of the government. The potential for abuse is too great.
It could be that the best solution for our moment in time is a handful of beneficent individuals running servers out of their closets. It's crazy, but it's kind of cool.
Why wouldn't you/her just call the emergency number your city has? That's incredibly easy to look up, probably a little faster than searching through Twitter.
Or even check the cities website, for that matter.
Idk, to me that's like going to Facebook to call the police. Why would you do that?
You're right that it's probably easier (and more reliable) to call the city's emergency number. At that time, I knew that the Twitter account existed and had nearly-realtime emergency updates which is why I chose to check there. I'll check the city's website now to bookmark it for later - thanks for that idea :)
I wasn't ragging on you, that was just how I was thinking of it. I know it's easy to think "outside of the box" when your mind is racing. Checking Twitter ain't nothing, check this out:
I woke up from a nap and my apt was burning down around me. My downstairs neighbor started an electrical fire while he was out of the house. The flames were shoulder high. My brilliant mind ran into the kitchen, past the fire extinguisher, and grabbed a pot off the stove to fill it with water.
Thinking out side the box in an emergency lol
My city just had a major storm which killed power and cell data for a ton of people. Even when the power was back on, you couldn't use your cell phone except on WiFi because the towers were still down. Phone calls just wouldn't get through. Even texts often didn't get through- the pharmacy texted me on Monday to tell me my pills were ready and I went there yesterday to ask why they weren't ready yet.
Would being able to see information on Twitter solved these problems? Of course not, but it might have at least kept me informed.
Same thing, man. Go to the source. Why are you relying on a middleman like Twitter?
If the phone isn't working, how am I supposed to do that?
Like I said- calls and texts weren't getting through.
I'm sorry, I'm still not seeing how Twitter fits into this. I've never needed to go on Twitter for any reason in my life, especially for info on my meds. I understand you're providing a use case example but it just seems extremely silly to me.
People are somehow ok convincing themselves that Twitter is an important public utility when it's absolutely not. Step away, it's ok you'll be fine.
Twitter has emergency services giving information. Which is great if you have wifi but not a working phone.
I guarantee there are actual emergency service systems available that are not Twitter.
Great. When you let me know how to locate them, let me know. Because no one here does.
Well I mean, do you really think Twitter invented emergency services? Like it never existed before Twitter or something? For decades, centuries, everyone was completely in the dark about current situations lmao
No, I think it means emergency services are relying on Twitter.