> 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

> 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.