I have a long commute in and out of a large city. Since I spend so much time on the road, I always try to get the details of Amber Alert notifications to be on the lookout for vehicles used in abductions. I guess I can’t do that anymore since Twitter requires an account to see Amber Alerts. Hopefully my state finds another platform to post them.
I’ve been constantly amazed at how normalized it’s gotten for not only other companies, but for governments, to rely so much on sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc, for essential information like Amber Alerts. Shit like this hopefully makes people more aware of how treacherous it is to rely on corporate services for public services. Maybe the gov will finally institute their own web services for public information (unlikely) or at least enact boundaries on services that have been widely adopted (slight more likely).
The data secure officer of our goverment has build a mastodon server and some official post there. I think more countries should do that. So they don’t have to rely on something like Twitter or Facebook. They could do that to reach more people, but with a mastodon instace they could be independent from companies
No one wants to download a government announcement app or go out of their way to check a government website. Twitter worked so well because people already had accounts, it was a widespread platform, and really helped maximize visibility. I don’t really blame officials for putting a lot of announcements on Twitter. It was either that or force some kind of app/system alert to get the word out. Yes, right now cell phones get amber alerts and weather warnings, but could you imagine the uproar if every bill vote, every infrastructure project, every hours change for each relevant government office was beamed straight to every phone? We’d cry out against the invasion of privacy and forced participation. Or worse, if the government ran the primary Twitter-like website to maintain control. We’d call it the protest as if it was the Chinese or North Korean government right at our fingertips. It was an OK solution in my mind until this entire debacle sought to capitalize overnight on a public fuckup
“I don’t really blame officials for putting a lot of announcements on Twitter.”
Turn back the calendar a bit, and it was officials giving announcements to be read on the 6:00 news.
And before that, articles being posted in the major newspapers.
And yes, before that, something like town criers.
So yeah, I don’t blame them either. The government officials have a purpose, and “building the means for mass communication” isn’t it.
Indeed - the government should go where the people are, not force them to use some dedicated governmental outlet. Of course, they should be using as many outlets as possible, including their own (for verification if nothing else). Just as announcements go to every major news outlet, they should use as many as possible today. And many do.
You’re right! It would be awful if it was implemented in literally the worst way possible 🙄
C’mon dude. I’m obviously not advocating for 1984 style government announcements forcefed into people’s eyeballs. Setting up a government only twitter-esque platform wouldn’t be that terrible. Hell, with something like Mastadon or Lemmy, it could integrate easily into what people are already using.
But don’t you know? They’re private companies, you can dictate what they can do! They need to make money! Profits! Responsibility to shareholders! Fuck anything else!