6 ms·

Why do they need social networks for that? Just set up an oldschool website and post stuff there.

jarebear6expepj 3y ago
Define social network. I agree, and would personally consider public websites, old and new school, to be social networks.
- blitz_skull 3y ago
  Yeah, not me. That's a website. It's a pretty distinct technological entity, that has nothing to do with "social" networking which has been defined during the past 20 years as a single website with "social" sharing capabilities. Ideally a government-run emergency broadcast website would have literally 0 social features.
  - sethhochberg 3y ago
    https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01082 https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01082 > Notify NYC messages are available through many formats, including email, text messages, telephone, a mobile application, the Notify NYC website, RSS, Twitter, and American Sign Language videos. Social can certainly be part of the mix. But its still silly to make it an exclusive channel.
  - jarebear6expepj 3y ago
    Not trying to be a pedant, but the WWW is a network, and being public implies a social use of the entity. I guess I am curious how exactly you would differentiate the two? Does it need a like and subscribe button? Public discourse?
    - blitz_skull 3y ago
      Yeah I don’t label something as “social” just because it’s “public”. I guess I’m saying we don’t need to like and comment on emergency updates. You can already share by an innovative technology called “URLs” ;)
eropple 3y ago
Who's going to think of going to a website when under stress when they already have channels they go to and expect to be populated? Convincing people to return to websites for this kind of thing is boiling the ocean.
- damnesian 3y ago
  Correct. But I think an app on iOS and Android could certainly do it.
  - eropple 3y ago
    So we should exclude Blackberry users? Like, tongue in cheek, but until the mad weirdo took over, Twitter was no less effective and open-access readable than an app, while requiring zero engineering effort from organizations that don't have engineering capability.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  What's wrong with a website? If something massive is happening, do you open twitter to look at selfbrags, burger pics, etc., or do you open your local/national newssite (cnn.com, fox.com whatever) to see what happened? Want to see the weather? Will you open a weather site or wait for someone to put the report on twitter? Think you felt an earthquake... twitter? Or national eaqrthquake monitoring site? See a bunch of firefighters... twitter or emergency site?
  - eropple 3y ago
    "What's wrong with a website" is that it is not part of a relevance-curated, pushed feed that people are already using. If you look at pre-idiot-king Twitter, when there's an earthquake it fills up with comments about it, and very rapidly. Geological advisories get retweeted, again very rapidly. It turns out that yeah, this kinda actually works! I am not, I stress, saying that I like that this is the reality of things, but it speaks for itself.
duxup 3y ago
> Why do they need social networks for that? That’s where people are. The number of people hanging out on some government website is probably low. The person tasked with warning is probably concerned with getting the word out to as many people as possible and less so how we would like things to be (not have to use twitter). If this was only announced via some obscure website we would be wondering why they didn't just tweet it out / why the government would expect people to just find some random website and refresh it all day.
- earleybird 3y ago
  You're quite right, most people don't camp out on the DriveBC map or events pages. They do however park themselves on the webcam pages (which update as frequently as every two minutes). The webcam component of DriveBC is 10:1 in the request stats. The majority of bandwidth is consumed on the webcam pages. Have a look around, try out Replay-the-Day.
HyprMusic 3y ago
They did. From the article: "DriveBC has a dedicated website, but many access its automated messages through its Twitter account, a platform accessed by more than a quarter of Canadians in 2023, according to the company’s advertising data." The issue is no-one is going to know about that website whereas a tweet it likely to get retweeted by other residents.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
A lot of people will go to Twitter (et al) first, because it's easier to find things happening in your region than figuring out which website has information on it. I mean take power outages. I have to figure out the website every time there's an outage then wait for them to actually update it, whereas Twitter already had pictures of the substation that was on fire.
renegade-otter 3y ago
And then what, have everyone sit there all day and hit "refresh"?
badwolf 3y ago
That's where the people are. A message can get spread much wider, and quicker due to retweets/re-shares.

Define social network. I agree, and would personally consider public websites, old and new school, to be social networks.

blitz_skull 3y ago
Yeah, not me. That's a website. It's a pretty distinct technological entity, that has nothing to do with "social" networking which has been defined during the past 20 years as a single website with "social" sharing capabilities. Ideally a government-run emergency broadcast website would have literally 0 social features.
- sethhochberg 3y ago
  https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01082 https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01082 > Notify NYC messages are available through many formats, including email, text messages, telephone, a mobile application, the Notify NYC website, RSS, Twitter, and American Sign Language videos. Social can certainly be part of the mix. But its still silly to make it an exclusive channel.
- jarebear6expepj 3y ago
  Not trying to be a pedant, but the WWW is a network, and being public implies a social use of the entity. I guess I am curious how exactly you would differentiate the two? Does it need a like and subscribe button? Public discourse?
  - blitz_skull 3y ago
    Yeah I don’t label something as “social” just because it’s “public”. I guess I’m saying we don’t need to like and comment on emergency updates. You can already share by an innovative technology called “URLs” ;)

eropple 3y ago

Who's going to think of going to a website when under stress when they already have channels they go to and expect to be populated? Convincing people to return to websites for this kind of thing is boiling the ocean.

damnesian 3y ago
Correct. But I think an app on iOS and Android could certainly do it.
- eropple 3y ago
  So we should exclude Blackberry users? Like, tongue in cheek, but until the mad weirdo took over, Twitter was no less effective and open-access readable than an app, while requiring zero engineering effort from organizations that don't have engineering capability.
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
What's wrong with a website? If something massive is happening, do you open twitter to look at selfbrags, burger pics, etc., or do you open your local/national newssite (cnn.com, fox.com whatever) to see what happened? Want to see the weather? Will you open a weather site or wait for someone to put the report on twitter? Think you felt an earthquake... twitter? Or national eaqrthquake monitoring site? See a bunch of firefighters... twitter or emergency site?
- eropple 3y ago
  "What's wrong with a website" is that it is not part of a relevance-curated, pushed feed that people are already using. If you look at pre-idiot-king Twitter, when there's an earthquake it fills up with comments about it, and very rapidly. Geological advisories get retweeted, again very rapidly. It turns out that yeah, this kinda actually works! I am not, I stress, saying that I like that this is the reality of things, but it speaks for itself.

duxup 3y ago

> Why do they need social networks for that? That’s where people are. The number of people hanging out on some government website is probably low. The person tasked with warning is probably concerned with getting the word out to as many people as possible and less so how we would like things to be (not have to use twitter). If this was only announced via some obscure website we would be wondering why they didn't just tweet it out / why the government would expect people to just find some random website and refresh it all day.

earleybird 3y ago
You're quite right, most people don't camp out on the DriveBC map or events pages. They do however park themselves on the webcam pages (which update as frequently as every two minutes). The webcam component of DriveBC is 10:1 in the request stats. The majority of bandwidth is consumed on the webcam pages. Have a look around, try out Replay-the-Day.

HyprMusic 3y ago

They did. From the article: "DriveBC has a dedicated website, but many access its automated messages through its Twitter account, a platform accessed by more than a quarter of Canadians in 2023, according to the company’s advertising data." The issue is no-one is going to know about that website whereas a tweet it likely to get retweeted by other residents.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

A lot of people will go to Twitter (et al) first, because it's easier to find things happening in your region than figuring out which website has information on it. I mean take power outages. I have to figure out the website every time there's an outage then wait for them to actually update it, whereas Twitter already had pictures of the substation that was on fire.

renegade-otter 3y ago

And then what, have everyone sit there all day and hit "refresh"?

badwolf 3y ago

That's where the people are. A message can get spread much wider, and quicker due to retweets/re-shares.