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> The loss here is immense. I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on

> The loss here is immense. I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on a signup required, private platform, regardless of convenience. For the majority of the population who don't use or monitor Twitter, forcing governments to find alternatives is an improvement.

olliej 3y ago
> I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on a signup required, private platform, regardless of convenience. 100% agree, if that were the case. Except it isn't. NWS provides numerous different mechanisms by which you can get alerts. The issue is here is a medium that many people do use, and use fairly consistently, so the government rightly said: oh, we should provide that information through this medium as well as (not instead of) the other mechanisms, thus maximizing the ability for people to access this information. Most people don't have rss readers, and those that do clearly don't check as frequently as twitter or other social media. Most people don't have shortwave receivers. Most people don't use mastodon. Many (most?) people aren't listening to the radio during the day. > forcing governments to find alternatives is an improvement. The government provides numerous other channels. This isn't a matter of the government finding alternatives. The goal of these alerts is to be accessible to as many people as possible. That means if there is a significant audience of any given communication channel, there is an immediate benefit to expanding publication to those channels. You're acting like the NWS using twitter is restricting access to the information, when the purpose of using twitter is to further expand functionally useful access to it. Saying "don't provide this information on closed/account driven services" just because they're "closed" is counter to the goal of these alerts, which is to inform as many people as possible.
rektide 3y ago
There's still some passable anonymous access still but not great. For many many years Twitter themselves had RSS feeds publicly available... that was the way I followed Twitter folks for a long time. It's hard to appreciate how much worse Twitter has gotten, and how much sense it made to be there when it was such a vibrant open platform. I also think another commenter is spot on, that this is/was one of the best most effective ways to get information out fast. If one of your friends notices the alert they'll probably message you even if they're in some other area to let you know. The ability of any random thing to quickly get visible & boosted is unparalleled, especially for a general purpose communication network. Cynicism is fine but it has to be willing to meet with truth to & this all used to make so so much sense, was so good. And again as another great commenter said, there were & ought to be many different ways this stuff was sent out; it's never just been Twitter.

olliej 3y ago

> I disagree mainly because I don't think the government can be considered to have done this job sharing information by posting it on a signup required, private platform, regardless of convenience. 100% agree, if that were the case. Except it isn't. NWS provides numerous different mechanisms by which you can get alerts. The issue is here is a medium that many people do use, and use fairly consistently, so the government rightly said: oh, we should provide that information through this medium as well as (not instead of) the other mechanisms, thus maximizing the ability for people to access this information. Most people don't have rss readers, and those that do clearly don't check as frequently as twitter or other social media. Most people don't have shortwave receivers. Most people don't use mastodon. Many (most?) people aren't listening to the radio during the day. > forcing governments to find alternatives is an improvement. The government provides numerous other channels. This isn't a matter of the government finding alternatives. The goal of these alerts is to be accessible to as many people as possible. That means if there is a significant audience of any given communication channel, there is an immediate benefit to expanding publication to those channels. You're acting like the NWS using twitter is restricting access to the information, when the purpose of using twitter is to further expand functionally useful access to it. Saying "don't provide this information on closed/account driven services" just because they're "closed" is counter to the goal of these alerts, which is to inform as many people as possible.

rektide 3y ago

There's still some passable anonymous access still but not great. For many many years Twitter themselves had RSS feeds publicly available... that was the way I followed Twitter folks for a long time. It's hard to appreciate how much worse Twitter has gotten, and how much sense it made to be there when it was such a vibrant open platform. I also think another commenter is spot on, that this is/was one of the best most effective ways to get information out fast. If one of your friends notices the alert they'll probably message you even if they're in some other area to let you know. The ability of any random thing to quickly get visible & boosted is unparalleled, especially for a general purpose communication network. Cynicism is fine but it has to be willing to meet with truth to & this all used to make so so much sense, was so good. And again as another great commenter said, there were & ought to be many different ways this stuff was sent out; it's never just been Twitter.