Submitted 4 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Japanese disaster prevention X account can’t post anymore after hitting API limit - The issue has arisen after major Tsunami warnings have been issued in areas of Japan following a strong earthquake::undefined
This is reason #856632 that you don’t put vital government services on fucking Twitter.
Reminds me of Canada’s emergency alert system.
A custody mixup happens a 5 hour drive away with the child last seen an hour ago? Top priority notification to every device capable of receiving SMS. And then a second one in French. And then a third one because they forgot to give any details about who or what to look for. And then a fourth one in French. And then a fifth one because they settled the mix-up. And then a sixth one in French.
Again, they are IMPOSSIBLE to turn off through general device settings because they’re sent at the presidential level (aka. “nuclear launch detected”-level threat).
But an active shooter is going on a killing spree dressed as an officer? Better hope you’ve liked and subscribed to the right police association on Twitter! Because only one of them sent out anything, and nobody sent out an emergency notification at any level.
The difference being a team of 10 high up administrators took 1 hour to write each of the messages regarding the child.
Active shooter? Good luck getting ANY credible info until after police have killed them. IC, EOC, Unified Command all have to get together and push out the same message.
As others have said, there’s a reason why you wait for verified information through proper channels.
Again, they are IMPOSSIBLE to turn off through general device settings
I don’t know about your phone, but at least in mine, they can in fact be turned off in general device settings. There’s a “Wireless emergency alerts” section in the options, under which you can individually toggle Extreme Alerts, Severe Alerts, Amber Alerts, and Tests
There are government text messages and local websites and all sorts of ways of reaching people. Unfortunately, X probably reaches ten times as many people. I think a diversified approach makes sense.
That being said, us gov has sent the text messages and that seems to be the best way to do it. Everyone has a phone. And if you don’t, then you like to live on the edge.
Or any other service, that like Twitter, is a closed for profit service of a multinational for profit corporations.
The universe of stupidity is so endless that I don’t know in which direction to fight really.
On most public\political subjects people I talk to think I’m delusional, they talk how “free markets don’t work”, “regulation prevents murderous chaos”, “regulation prevents monopolies and wild capitalism” and so on.
But when it’s this kind of thing, it suddenly becomes all right for them to offload a public service to a private company. And they suddenly become optimists. Same fscking people. I once had that from a communist.
I think it’s primate psychology. Libertarian ideas are seen as delusional because these people fear chaos and the feeling of letting go. And for the same reason big corporations are seen as all right because they are familiar, there’s the feeling of order and control. Primates flock to strength.
For the same reason some people defend copyright, I think. They want hierarchy, somebody owning every recognizable picture. A master in the house.
NERV is a private service, which rebroadcasts government emergency warnings with better representations.
It annoys me that pretty much every local government agency is on Twitter and FB and don’t even really update their own websites. It’s a shame nobody uses RSS much these days.
Not being on Twitter in this case is like shouting “RUN AWAY!” in several empty rooms and not bothering to go into the room full of people.
Emergency broadcasts should be on all platforms. You need to maximize the chance of reaching people.
How about avoiding commercial platforms when it comes to vitally important official communication?
They do, all phones get an emergency alert and tvs display a message. Twitter was another vector to spread the word out.
Well. Then they should tell those people who still use X that this is an unreliable source. For anything else it already is, anyway.
Problem is that no noncommercial platform would ever have the same coverage as a commercial one like X. People simply would not see the necessity to install it until it’s too late.
This is just a failure in government/governance.
There is literally an opportunity for every nation in the world to run it’s own social media service as a hub for government services, alerts etc. Even now the wealthiest nations are scrambling to do something like this but it’s too little, too late.
And even when they figure out software/process there’s no government infrastructure that can compete with the private sector. Amazon in particular are a scary one to me - the amount of sensitive data governments around the world casually chuck into S3 is going to end very badly for a lot of people.
We need governments to get serious about digital infrastructure and security, in the same way they ensure food security, sanitation. Digital capability is just not negotiable anymore, it’s vital.
Imagine if the only alert of the impending death wave was some federated lemmy server which was having a few network problems that day.
Could always go the route of an amber alert-like system being primary and then pipe the same msg to their secondary commercial platforms (like X). I’m not privy on the details but it sounds irresponsible to rely on X primarily/solely.
Kind of like the amber alert system?
The thing is, they communicate where people’s at. People gotta move
People will move if they learn that their lives are at stake by using X.
NERV already has a Mastodon server.
They already announced last year that they want to move away from Twitter.
Gotta love stirring up old controversies for views because it’s fashionable to hate Twitter right now lol
They are using older version of Mastodon, in which it could lead to problems. They should update the software.
Love it when corporations have more power than government entities.
The dystopian future is coming faster than ever
That crazy dystopian future where the government has to abide by the terms and conditions of private corporations. So wild. 🙄
Letting people senselessly get injured or die seems to be a common theme in Elon’s ventures, so I’m not all that surprised about this.
I feel like this is warranted:
Fuck Elon.
Come on, this is totally the japanese government’s fault. They should be aware of the limits of the services they use. How are we blaming Twitter for the incompetence of the japanese government? I get that we want to hate in Twitter but how incompetent is that team, they didn’t forsee this? A disaster prevention team didn’t forsee the limits of the communication services they use?
I don’t like Twitter but come on, stop shifting the blame.
Twitter worked. Elon bought it. Enshittification ensued. Twitter broke. Hmmm…
Sounds like it’s time for governments to get off Xitter.
The Evangelion app name is pure gold.
Fuck X and Musk.
What Evangelion app?
NERV is the name of the major organization in Evangelion. Gehirn Inc, the creator of this app, is the name of the predecessor to NERV in NGE.
The tsunami warning app is named NERV as the devs are big fans of Evangelion.
Just say twitter. Calling it “x” will literally always be silly and cumbersome.
1/7 of the staff to run a company, how stupid.
Twitter was useless but X is just a vanity project at this point
It definitely makes headlines worse anyway
Why is a critical service like disaster precention using an unreliable service like Twitter?
It’s probably one of numerous ways they try and reach people. Wouldn’t be surprised if they have it set up to spam alerts out through various mechanisms including social media. It’s just that one platform is now complete dogshit. Maybe the fact that alerts or other important information are being blocked by the channel will hasten its decline in Japan.
Why not? Wouldn’t you want information going out on every available service? They likely have info going out on Facebook as well.
Time to switch to mastodon.
Society if people read the article: 1000000110
But the town square!!!111
NERV announcements got blocked? I guess he’s not getting in the robot after all
Mastodon is a thing and they will own their instance.
If only there was some sort of legal agreement that should and could be reached when the govt wants to use some private platform to communicate something important to people. If only.
Well, they are no fascists so they can not expect preferential treatment from Elon.
Countries should have their own Mastodon instances. Then again, you can’t trust governments.
Have multiple accounts and rotate through them with each post. But then you have to make sure all of your followers are following all accounts. It’s a shitty workaround but it’s a shitty platform to begin with.
I remember reading that Twitter was pretty famous on Japan so that’s why they are still there.
I think the replies to this post really captures Lemmy’s energy and I love it.
GTFO Shitter.
I’m surprised they don’t send faxes.
Great work Elon ! Now Twitter’s service has indirectly impacted the life of some people
Holy shit, didn’t know there is an actual Nerv created by an organisation named Gehirn. I mean, good what they are doing, just hope, that Gehirn doesn’t get around to do the instrumentality project. Otherwise we will get problems with angels
Governments should not depend on social media for vital communications, period.
Didn’t they set up their own Mastodon instance? Hopefully they announced it nationwide so they could get as many people as possible on it.
Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Why governments would ever use a private service for critical use baffles me.
Create your own emergency notification system!
echo64@lemmy.world 4 months ago
They have one, but you also want information to be where people are. Especially if where people are is full of misinformation and rumours.
wandermind@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
Japan has various earthquake notification systems. Tweets are just one more way to get the information to the people on a platform they use.
AbidanYre@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Those never turn out well.
Running their own mastodon instance should be viable though.
otter@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
I remember seeing that they did have a fediverse account? This seems related to that
Brkdncr@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
The Los Angeles/ California earthquake alert system worked just fine today.
hansl@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Is Mastodon even viable for time sensitive information? You need to wait for your instance to propagate the post from their instance which can take time.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
It’s a secondary feature of a mysterious enterprise, unknown to americans, called “public media”
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
Just mass send SMSs in a given area
ThePantser@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Cell phones already have the emergency alert system they could just use that.
BetaSalmon@lemmy.world 4 months ago
One thing I wish iOS/Android did was have the option for these emergency alerts to be multilingual, or provide some sort of auto translation. When i was in Japan in November, I received an emergency alert due to NK launching some missiles. It’s pretty scary to have your phone blow up with a loud alarm, and not being able to read the alert because it’s in Japanese. On iOS, you also can’t just copy the notification to translate it. I had to take a picture, and then have Google Translate translate it.
I was anticipating some big earthquake, but turned out to be a child playing with his rockets.
forty2@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Remember when just about every government employee was carrying around a BlackBerry device for official business? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That’s different. They had signed contacts and were legally obligated to provide service. Twitter is a free service that can be turned off at any time, with no notice, and is run by a schizophrenic twat with a god complex. It’s just monumentally stupid to put lives on the line through a service like that.
AbidanYre@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I remember when they all loved the Nextel PTT phones.
DoomsdaySprocket@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
This same issue happened during wildfire season in BC, Canada if I recall. A small polite media outrage over it, then forgotten.
Best case scenario would be an independent, international system developed within and for the emergency services community worldwide. Judging by the way firefighters travel internationally to fight forest fires worldwide, the community could be strong enough to support a solution like that, in my opinion.
quo@feddit.uk 4 months ago
LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Because it’s often easier, cheaper, and more efficient in cases that mirror public needs. Alerting, SMS, cloud storage, all are solved and competitively priced. And don’t get me wrong, there ARE use cases for doing certain things custom or internally. There will need to be a mix of things.
The issue, is having an appropriate SLA and having the ability to hold companies accountable when it’s not met.
Pacmanlives@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Hate to say it but I would commonly get alerts from Twitter in the before times about local issues before I would get notified by my local government. Sadly they switched to encrypted radios so I can’t even keep up that way either these days
Aopen@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
NERV isnt owned by gov and: