Twitter not suited for emergency communications, Dutch say after storm
Source: Reuters
Twitter is not the right place to seek information during an emergency, Dutch politicians and a prominent online group said on Wednesday, following an incident in which citizens were directed to the platform for updates during a large storm.
"We find it problematic that the government depends on Twitter for sharing crucial information," lawmaker Nico Drost's office said in emailed remarks to Reuters, citing accessibility, accountability and reliability issues.
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"It's ridiculous to use Twitter," said Bits of Freedom spokesperson Ber Engels, citing problems with dis-information and Twitter being hard to reach quickly for people without accounts. He also noted the company had recently imposed limits on the number of tweets that can be viewed by anyone who hasn't paid for a subscription.
"You might see one tweet with great information from emergency services, but maybe there are 10 tweets that Twitter prioritizes which contain completely false information," he said.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/twitter-not-suited-emergency-communications-dutch-say-after-storm-2023-07-05/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=Technology-Roundup&utm_term=070523
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as many federal agencies - notably the National Weather Service - has used it to quickly send out Watches, Advisories, Warnings, and Emergencies. People with accounts obviously could see those but people were not required to have an account to visit the web pages that hosted the tweets to see the same info.
It's also used by many LEO to quickly communicate info to the public and media ahead of any broadcast "press conferences" (e.g.,notifications of status briefing times and locations, photos of suspects/persons of interest, notices and photos of missing children, etc).
For years, government entities were encouraged to and then eventually "shamed" into moving some of their communications options TO "social media". This often meant use of "Facebook Live" for streams and Twitter for rapid dissemination of status updates for a variety of issues.
Now with Musk's dicking with it, he has done a Veruca Salt upheaval of a communications tool that has been ingrained into the operations of many local/county/state/federal agencies over the past decade or more.
If they only announced the dangerous storm on Twitter and nowhere else, that would be truly negligent.
