I wonder why such an important piece of info is posted on social media but not on a dedicated webpage that can be linked to any social media posts.
Social media has a very good ratio of information spreading versus effort required. It’s also why it’s a popular thing for misinformation and influence campaigns.
In contrast, if a government agency wants to make a website for this, it probably needs a proposal, budget request, approval by a commission, a bidding process, and other bureaucatic procedures put in place by politicians that wanted to lower spending.
How hard is it to hire some 23 year old who just graduated in IT and ask them to do it? Static webpages aren’t hard, drag learned how to make them in high school.
I mean, it’s not like people would check that dedicated webpage on their own, and they are less likely to click on that webpage to get the additional details. Just put it on the platform most people are using and don’t add extra steps to see what’s needed.
If they’re looking to Xitter it could be copy/pasted instead, but then updates get harder to manage.
if you read the article, you’d find out that the alert linked to the X post. it could be linking to a dedicated webpage instead, which wouldn’t require logging in.
It should be linked to another page. Social media should never the be the primary source for anything like this.
That was my take. Still is, but was before, too, although I have concerns about it. I don’t even use xitter. It’s an unfortunate conundrum and I don’t know the answer. We are clearly seeing the results of channeling government communications through private platforms where information can be gatekept. But what’s the alternative? I agree that the government website should be the primary source and private platforms the secondary source, but, much in the way US-market cars hide the “real” tail lights in/under the trunk in order to put “aux” tail lights on moving trunk/tailgate panels, that’s just not how the general public will use it.
People want to be entertained. Getting info through private media is the most we can hope for. People don’t want to get real news media, let alone their local government’s attempt at a blog site. I know we get amber alerts direct from the cell network to some unique software on phones, but I imagine rolling out some more-frequent alert system will cause a ton of privacy/freedom backlash crying about being one goosestep away from China.
But what’s the alternative?
the government hosting their own social media like how some college campus’ have their own mastadon server specifically for their universities news. It’s not like other organizations haven’t already done it before. Spin your own server, and in your alerts, link your own mastodon server, which should not require user login to read. The platform doesnt matter as long as the information and where to send additional information for help is functional for them. spinning their own servers gives them full control of the outcome.
I mean fuck X, sure, but why is the police posting crucial information on a commercial, privately moderated platform? Why would you just assume everyone has an account with Musk’s service?
I’ve seen this shit in Europe too - with everyone just assuming you’ll have WhatsApp. At least most EU governments don’t use it exclusively, but I’m certain countries, like Turkey, WhatsApp is the only channel where information can often be found.
The Dutch government used Twitter for a lot of information (though this was often if not always found on their own websites as well), but now they host their own Mastodon instance for any gov related stuff that can be used by government agencies in conjunction with or as a replacement for Twitter. Which is pretty cool imo.
Honestly, Mastodon is better than Twitter of course but I would still prefer them to post official stuff on a website that isn’t social media at all.
They do that as well. The social media post will contain a brief synopsis and will link to a government website for more information.
I agree, but this would only work if people used RSS in the mainstream. They should but they don’t. So it seems posting to a social account that people can follow for updates is the path of least resistance.
Why? As long as the host it and moderate it, why does it matter that the platform’s code was created as social media?
This is part of the fall of Twitter.
There were two paths for Twitter, in the eyes of many idealistic people like me. One path was something terrible like what happened with Musk. The second path was one that treated it as a public commons of the world.
That second path is how many grew to understand Twitter during its rise and peak. This is why there are so many situations where various public and governmental groups used it as a notification feed/system.
You can go on about how they should just start their own ActivityPub based solution, or move to bluesky or whatever. But it’s not that simple for all of them. Nor are all of the groups involved in posting these feeds technically savvy to do so. Twitter made it easy, and it made sense.
The article could have easily been just as absurd if it was about how people didn’t get the alert because the alerts were moved to a mastodon instance and people are upset because they don’t want to have to go through the trouble of picking a server. heh.
It’s so unfortunate that Twitter went this way. No more free and easy api, no more third party apps and tools. No more expectation that everyone is there. No more expectation that public alerts make sense there.
Yes, centralizing all of this is a big problem. And musk is just one example of why. But, it could have gone the other way.
The article could have easily been just as absurd if it was about how people didn’t get the alert because the alerts were moved to a mastodon instance and people are upset because they don’t want to have to go through the trouble of picking a server. heh.
You can view mastodon posts without being forced to make an account. This use to be the case with Twitter before it was turned into X.
Twitter is hot garbage, that’s only gotten worse since Elon took over, but this is really just a problem with government agencies/departments using social media websites as primary avenues of delivering information.
Dear fucking god this is the real issue and why Mastodon is the solution because the agencies can have their own self-hosted presence. Is it perfect by any stretch? Oh fuck no, but it’s a lot closer to those groups having an independence and not relying on the corporations good graces for any of it to keep functioning.
When government relies on corporations to function, those corporations can hold a proverbial gun to the governments head and say “now do what we say or we make everything stop working.”
this is really just a problem with government agencies/departments using social media websites as primary avenues of delivering information.
I guarantee that this was not a “primary avenue” for delivering this information.
Edit: I was wrong. Finally got the confirmation that should have been included in the article from the beginning:
The alert popped up on the phone with the link, which people could not see.
But instead of conveying vital information that could help locate the victim within the notification itself, the law enforcement agency linked to a post from its official X account
Ah. I see. The alerts were conveyed directly to phones via primary avenues: Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) and Emergency Alert System (EAS). Those alerts included a link to their Xhitter account.
Every Amber alert I’ve seen has included location, name of the adult, license plate, vehicle description, a description of the child, etc. Most include come kind of link (secondary avenue) that (in my experience) just shows the content from the alert, and doesn’t actually provide any further detail.
Have we confirmed that this alert included only the link to Xhitter, without the other data? If that is actually the case, it’s not just the CHP’s failure, but also the managers of the WEA and EAS systems: They aren’t supposed to activate those systems without the actual message.
That’s why no official service should use commercial social media.
it’s so easy to host an ActivityPub server oneself, there’s really no excuse for a government agency not to be doing that instead of relying on ex-Twitter
Using (only) corpomedia to announce information at government level should be illegal.
How do you think amber alerts work in general? The telecoms lease frequency from government, but they go through the corporate telephone system.
The problem here isn’t corporate or not, it’s a specific police department making decisions that don’t make sense, namely sending out data on a specific corpo platform without a legally binding agreement that this information will reach people.
In contrast, my county for example also contracts through a corporation, but that corporation is purpose built to provide municipalities with guaranteed (as much as this is possible) delivery.
