I have a long commute in and out of a large city. Since I spend so much time on the road, I always try to get the details of Amber Alert notifications to be on the lookout for vehicles used in abductions. I guess I can't do that anymore since Twitter requires an account to see Amber Alerts. Hopefully my state finds another platform to post them.
This is why governments should stop relying on private companies and start setting up their own fediverse servers which they will have full control over.
I didn't even consider the fact that the fediverse offers us the ability to start having publicly owned social media and government-run instances for direct communication.
I've been constantly amazed at how normalized it's gotten for not only other companies, but for governments, to rely so much on sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc, for essential information like Amber Alerts. Shit like this hopefully makes people more aware of how treacherous it is to rely on corporate services for public services. Maybe the gov will finally institute their own web services for public information (unlikely) or at least enact boundaries on services that have been widely adopted (slight more likely).
But don't you know? They're private companies, you can dictate what they can do! They need to make money! Profits! Responsibility to shareholders! Fuck anything else!
The data secure officer of our goverment has build a mastodon server and some official post there. I think more countries should do that. So they don't have to rely on something like Twitter or Facebook. They could do that to reach more people, but with a mastodon instace they could be independent from companies
No one wants to download a government announcement app or go out of their way to check a government website. Twitter worked so well because people already had accounts, it was a widespread platform, and really helped maximize visibility. I don't really blame officials for putting a lot of announcements on Twitter. It was either that or force some kind of app/system alert to get the word out. Yes, right now cell phones get amber alerts and weather warnings, but could you imagine the uproar if every bill vote, every infrastructure project,, every hours change for each relevant government office was beamed straight to every phone? We'd cry out against the invasion of privacy and forced participation. Or worse, if the government ran the primary Twitter-like website to maintain control. We'd call it the protest as if it was the Chinese or North Korean government right at our fingertips. It was an OK solution in my mind until this entire debacle sought to capitalize overnight on a public fuckup
Indeed - the government should go where the people are, not force them to use some dedicated governmental outlet. Of course, they should be using as many outlets as possible, including their own (for verification if nothing else). Just as announcements go to every major news outlet, they should use as many as possible today. And many do.
You're right! It would be awful if it was implemented in literally the worst way possible 🙄
C'mon dude. I'm obviously not advocating for 1984 style government announcements forcefed into people's eyeballs. Setting up a government only twitter-esque platform wouldn't be that terrible. Hell, with something like Mastadon or Lemmy, it could integrate easily into what people are already using.
What a terrible idea... in Oregon they just text the relevant information to you
I went and checked and they had a link for CHP which looked like it took you to a website...well it did but it just went straight to twitter...I could understand supplementing a state website with Twitter updates but for that to be the sole source of info I can find is just stupid.
Nope. But one time I saw the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, and I had never seen it before. So it's possible. I end up driving 2 1/2 hours per day, so anything to make things more interesting.
This change also blocks nitter since it relies on being able to access Twitter as a non-logged-in user. More info on their GitHub: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/919
Not sure about what carrier you use or what device you use, but I'm on AT&T using a Pixel 6a with CalyxOS, which is just de-googled Android, and on Android if you accidentally swipe away an amber alert notification you can find it again by going to:
But your point still stands, governments and public institutions really need to stop relying on privately owned and operated social media platforms for posting stuff like this. If they want to use a social platform to publish alerts, they would be much better off standing up their own Mastodon instance that is "just" for those alerts. People could follow those accounts if they want, and those institutions wouldn't be subject to the whims of overpaid unpredictable man children.
Good info, just wanted to add on with instructions for both major mobile platforms. Depending on your specific device and version, there may be some slight differences in how the menu options are worded and you might need to expand a collapsed section in the menu to see the settings.
Yeah, if you ignore the piece of technology receiving a technological message from another piece of technology which you then view on the piece of technology, I guess there is no technology involved
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