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> Your utility will post a highly localized service outage that might only affect 1 block of a city or less to their world facing twitter feed? And not simply a

by bpt3 14d ago

> Your utility will post a highly localized service outage that might only affect 1 block of a city or less to their world facing twitter feed? And not simply alert customers via their phone on file as they've done for me forever? It doesn't match your very contrived example specifically, but yes essential services in my major metropolitan area provide more useful and timely information via twitter/X than other sources. People don't or can't register for updates from the city or county, so government organizations have no means of publishing information for public consumption other than social media, and twitter was the de facto standard. Also, many local schools, clubs, etc. used it as their "official" source for updates for years. You are definitely out of the loop if you can't access it, and places are glacially slow to change.

aperrien 14d ago
Is it possible to help or encourage our local municipal services to have either an RSS or BlueSky feed? At this point, it's becoming apparent that putting all the information eggs in the twitter basket is/was a bad idea. This is a place where open source standards should shine.
- immibis2 14d ago
  The most practical way would probably be to create that feed yourself based on their Twitter feed. You could automate it using some Nitter-like service (please do not scrape public Nitters, but you can run your own Nitter and scrape it as you like). It is generally easier to do something like this yourself than to convince someone else, who does not care at all, to do it. I don't know how you would advertise it.
- multjoy 14d ago
  This is an area where Mastodon ought to shine. Departments/organisations can create their own instances, with named users. Interested constituents follow those users with their client of choice. Direct following means you avoid the federation dramas. No algorithim means that people get the updates they want when they're posted. Users get a familiar-looking client to bang out the quick updates. Obviously the issue is someone will need to run it, but if you're not open to public signups then the moderation burden doesn't exist and it's just a case of keeping things updated.
  - mahboi 14d ago
    On the last point, it's a lot harder to manage than you're making it sound. A public org isn't going to gate signups.
    - multjoy 14d ago
      You wouldn't let Joe Public create an email account on your mail server, why would you let them do so on a mastodon instance?
      - mahboi 14d ago
        Sorry, I misread your first comment. So only the org can post and people can only view. Doesn't seem like people would follow it then.
        multjoy 14d ago
        But that's not how Mastodon works. Like email, I sign up for a Mastodon account on a server that suits my tastes. I then follow other accounts, on other servers, using a client - I use Ivory on the mac & iPhone (because it's made by the same company who made Tweetbot) - and those accounts show up in my feed in chronological order, like Twitter in the old days.
  - deleted 14d ago
    [deleted]
- samizdis 14d ago
  How about municipal councils looking around at any remaining "mainstream media" local outlets and committing to post relevant notices/updates on their websites? This is something I wanted to push while working on newsroom CMS projects: giving direct input access to the CMS from external bodies - police, fire, ambulance etc. Posts could be vetted/edited by newsrooms, as with any externally filed copy, but turnaround would be a matter of half-a-minute or so. Either that or enable direct publishing permissions to said authorities.
- TFNA 14d ago
  I'm not going to say RSS is inherently inaccessible to normies, because the blogosphere of 20 years ago saw even elderly non-techies happily using it. However, I think the trends in computing in the years since, where most people use the internet solely through popular phone apps, mean that RSS is no longer going to see any significant use. So, a municipality is not doing a palpable service to its constituency by moving communications there.
  - mahboi 14d ago
    We even saw it with RSS. Everyone using RSS was lamenting Google Reader going away. Isn't the client supposed to be the most easily replaceable part of RSS?
    - ssl-3 14d ago
      It's weird that people still lament Google Reader going away. We've had RSS for about 27 years. Google Reader was around for less than 8 of those years, and it has now been 13 years since it died.
    - 1over137 14d ago
      Normies dont think in protocols, they think in apps.
      - mahboi 14d ago
        Websites said "follow our RSS feed," not "follow on Google Reader." Then again maybe normies never used RSS.
iso1631 14d ago
All my local groups are on facebook. It's horrendous. Could do with a browser plugin which only shows posts I want to see, it might even be good enough to send me back to facebook
- asdff 14d ago
  I think the last facebook group I was participant of was in school some 15 or 20 years ago before parents were allowed to make their own facebook accounts. Life has been just fine without any such dependence on twitter or facebook. It is always surprising to me how the people who use these networks so religiously cannot imagine living without them. I am here to say that yes, it is possible, and probably more people around your periphery are living like that to success without you even realizing it.
  - iso1631 12d ago
    Sure, I'll just tell my kids they can't do any extra curricular activities
    - bpt3 7d ago
      Right. The you (and I, elsewhere) are responding to about this obviously doesn't have any kids or meaningful interaction with their community. There's nothing wrong with living that way, but their lack of perspective or understanding that most people don't get to decide what mode of communication a medium to large sized bureaucracy uses to inform its members/constituents about information it has to share is something.
asdff 14d ago
OK, I am out of the loop. But, my point is, what loop? What is an essential piece of information that was only possible to reach you via twitter? Did this make or break your life recently? Would there truly have been no other way for you to find this information out?
- bpt3 13d ago
  Road closures, youth sports/school schedule changes due to things like weather, etc. Is it possible to live without this knowledge? Of course. But it's not unreasonable to me that people would want to receive this sort of information or that it is of some value to them, or that they'd rather have it pushed to them in an app on their phone than have to call friends or the school office to find out whether the status of some event has changed.
  - asdff 13d ago
    When there is a road closure it gets pushed to the systems that hook into google maps to reroute navigation. And short of that, there are also detour signs that redirect you around the obstruction. If something happened e.g. a snow day at school surely you could call the office and find that out. There is no way twitter is the sole source of that sort of information. I guarantee it is on their school website. You have to remember that the world has to work for the senile old person too.
    - bpt3 11d ago
      > When there is a road closure it gets pushed to the systems that hook into google maps to reroute navigation. Sure it does, everywhere. (/s in case that isn't clear, this doesn't always happen in my area which has several Google offices, let alone other less populated areas) > And short of that, there are also detour signs that redirect you around the obstruction. Sure, which you could have avoided entirely had you known about the issue. > If something happened e.g. a snow day at school surely you could call the office and find that out. There is no way twitter is the sole source of that sort of information. I guarantee it is on their school website. School closures for weather, yes, but not everything, and often they are slow to update, and people would rather not call (and the central office would rather not field those calls). > You have to remember that the world has to work for the senile old person too. And you have to remember that not everyone seems to be seeking out inconvenience as much as you. No one is saying it's impossible to survive without push notifications about local events, they are saying that twitter became a de facto standard for that years ago because it was the best option for publishing small updates by local governments and other similar organizations, and now that twitter has devolved into its current state there is no good alternative and people are slow to change.

by bpt3 14d ago

aperrien 14d ago

Is it possible to help or encourage our local municipal services to have either an RSS or BlueSky feed? At this point, it's becoming apparent that putting all the information eggs in the twitter basket is/was a bad idea. This is a place where open source standards should shine.

immibis2 14d ago
The most practical way would probably be to create that feed yourself based on their Twitter feed. You could automate it using some Nitter-like service (please do not scrape public Nitters, but you can run your own Nitter and scrape it as you like). It is generally easier to do something like this yourself than to convince someone else, who does not care at all, to do it. I don't know how you would advertise it.
multjoy 14d ago
This is an area where Mastodon ought to shine. Departments/organisations can create their own instances, with named users. Interested constituents follow those users with their client of choice. Direct following means you avoid the federation dramas. No algorithim means that people get the updates they want when they're posted. Users get a familiar-looking client to bang out the quick updates. Obviously the issue is someone will need to run it, but if you're not open to public signups then the moderation burden doesn't exist and it's just a case of keeping things updated.
- mahboi 14d ago
  On the last point, it's a lot harder to manage than you're making it sound. A public org isn't going to gate signups.
  - multjoy 14d ago
    You wouldn't let Joe Public create an email account on your mail server, why would you let them do so on a mastodon instance?
    - mahboi 14d ago
      Sorry, I misread your first comment. So only the org can post and people can only view. Doesn't seem like people would follow it then.
      - multjoy 14d ago
        But that's not how Mastodon works. Like email, I sign up for a Mastodon account on a server that suits my tastes. I then follow other accounts, on other servers, using a client - I use Ivory on the mac & iPhone (because it's made by the same company who made Tweetbot) - and those accounts show up in my feed in chronological order, like Twitter in the old days.
- deleted 14d ago
  [deleted]
samizdis 14d ago
How about municipal councils looking around at any remaining "mainstream media" local outlets and committing to post relevant notices/updates on their websites? This is something I wanted to push while working on newsroom CMS projects: giving direct input access to the CMS from external bodies - police, fire, ambulance etc. Posts could be vetted/edited by newsrooms, as with any externally filed copy, but turnaround would be a matter of half-a-minute or so. Either that or enable direct publishing permissions to said authorities.
TFNA 14d ago
I'm not going to say RSS is inherently inaccessible to normies, because the blogosphere of 20 years ago saw even elderly non-techies happily using it. However, I think the trends in computing in the years since, where most people use the internet solely through popular phone apps, mean that RSS is no longer going to see any significant use. So, a municipality is not doing a palpable service to its constituency by moving communications there.
- mahboi 14d ago
  We even saw it with RSS. Everyone using RSS was lamenting Google Reader going away. Isn't the client supposed to be the most easily replaceable part of RSS?
  - ssl-3 14d ago
    It's weird that people still lament Google Reader going away. We've had RSS for about 27 years. Google Reader was around for less than 8 of those years, and it has now been 13 years since it died.
  - 1over137 14d ago
    Normies dont think in protocols, they think in apps.
    - mahboi 14d ago
      Websites said "follow our RSS feed," not "follow on Google Reader." Then again maybe normies never used RSS.

iso1631 14d ago

All my local groups are on facebook. It's horrendous. Could do with a browser plugin which only shows posts I want to see, it might even be good enough to send me back to facebook

asdff 14d ago
I think the last facebook group I was participant of was in school some 15 or 20 years ago before parents were allowed to make their own facebook accounts. Life has been just fine without any such dependence on twitter or facebook. It is always surprising to me how the people who use these networks so religiously cannot imagine living without them. I am here to say that yes, it is possible, and probably more people around your periphery are living like that to success without you even realizing it.
- iso1631 12d ago
  Sure, I'll just tell my kids they can't do any extra curricular activities
  - bpt3 7d ago
    Right. The you (and I, elsewhere) are responding to about this obviously doesn't have any kids or meaningful interaction with their community. There's nothing wrong with living that way, but their lack of perspective or understanding that most people don't get to decide what mode of communication a medium to large sized bureaucracy uses to inform its members/constituents about information it has to share is something.

asdff 14d ago

OK, I am out of the loop. But, my point is, what loop? What is an essential piece of information that was only possible to reach you via twitter? Did this make or break your life recently? Would there truly have been no other way for you to find this information out?

bpt3 13d ago
Road closures, youth sports/school schedule changes due to things like weather, etc. Is it possible to live without this knowledge? Of course. But it's not unreasonable to me that people would want to receive this sort of information or that it is of some value to them, or that they'd rather have it pushed to them in an app on their phone than have to call friends or the school office to find out whether the status of some event has changed.
- asdff 13d ago
  When there is a road closure it gets pushed to the systems that hook into google maps to reroute navigation. And short of that, there are also detour signs that redirect you around the obstruction. If something happened e.g. a snow day at school surely you could call the office and find that out. There is no way twitter is the sole source of that sort of information. I guarantee it is on their school website. You have to remember that the world has to work for the senile old person too.
  - bpt3 11d ago
    > When there is a road closure it gets pushed to the systems that hook into google maps to reroute navigation. Sure it does, everywhere. (/s in case that isn't clear, this doesn't always happen in my area which has several Google offices, let alone other less populated areas) > And short of that, there are also detour signs that redirect you around the obstruction. Sure, which you could have avoided entirely had you known about the issue. > If something happened e.g. a snow day at school surely you could call the office and find that out. There is no way twitter is the sole source of that sort of information. I guarantee it is on their school website. School closures for weather, yes, but not everything, and often they are slow to update, and people would rather not call (and the central office would rather not field those calls). > You have to remember that the world has to work for the senile old person too. And you have to remember that not everyone seems to be seeking out inconvenience as much as you. No one is saying it's impossible to survive without push notifications about local events, they are saying that twitter became a de facto standard for that years ago because it was the best option for publishing small updates by local governments and other similar organizations, and now that twitter has devolved into its current state there is no good alternative and people are slow to change.