Elon Musk hates Americans, pass it on.
They won’t believe it if he tells us that himself…
Why the hell would they make the alert link to a post on anything instead of just having the relevant info in the alert? I’ve had at least 2 amber alerts come through and a few earthquake warnings as well, and they just had all the info you needed in the alert pop up itself.
All shitstain muskrat’s shrieking ‘Pedo’ at anyone critical of him really feels like projection in this context.
As most things do when it comes to the exceptionally primitive conservative reptile-brain.
I mean the guy even supports Gaetz after the investigation shows that he has sex with an underage girl for money… And was friends with Epstein and company…
He’s trying to dilute the accusations surrounding himself likely by just falsely a claiming others are involved in things he was.
This has been annoying me as well, so many city services got used to just using twitter and then Elon took over and now you just can’t find out about things unless you have an X account. Shortly after the change to X I drove hours to use a hiking trail that was closed - I checked the conditions on the park service’s website, but it was using a twitter feed and the top post was “trail is open, come on in!” because it had been changed to show the top post of all time instead of the newest post.
There should be some non-profit funded by cities that’s basically just a webpage where cities can post important info, or maybe they can have their own mastodon node.
RSS is as old as the internet but it’s been effectively killed, except for the websites that host it accidentally. Our city and The Orange House has one but it’s only limited information posted there.
RSS really should be more common.
You use your get RSS feeds for Twitter accounts. AFAIR. So Twitter accounts were effectively RSS notification feeds at one point.
Aaron Swartz was involved in developing RSS v1.0 too, cofounder of Reddit.
Aaron would be sadly disappointed, but probably unsurprised that we allowed the internet devolve to it’s current state. Mastodon still supports RSS so that would be effectively the same thing.
That’s because Elon Musk works with the pedophile elites. He can’t have people knowing the truth.
I sincerely doubt this was anything targeted at Amber Alerts specifically.
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
it’s so easy to host an ActivityPub server oneself
Tell that to the 60+ y/o’s in charge who dread email.
Hell, at this point I’d be content with gov’t institutions using a literal blog website for stuff like this… as long as it’s publicly accessible.
In Switzerland there is an app called Alertswiss which gets published by the government. They use it for critical alerts and you can also use it to see open warnings and where in the country there might be stuff happening.
Just do the same @California
My city of only 20k people in Texas has a similar app. Not sure what’s going on in California
Not that I do not agree, but if you think you’ll be able to get Americans, who already do not trust the government, to download an app on their phones made by the government, well I have a bridge to sell you.
Also, have you seen any of the official government websites? They’re buttgarbage. Go renew an amateur radio license online and tell me if anyone would intentionally install software designed like that on their devices.
The UK’s won several awards for design. It’s very easy to use. It would be nice to see something like that for the US.
It’s open source.
just deploy it verbatim, and change your laws and taxes to work with what the web services do!
It’s amazing how these very unregulated tech companies that have been proven time and time again to steal user data and mess up have this blind trust from the public.
They very much do not. No one trusts them. But they have other value that people are not willing to forego.
I haven’t been able to even* load* Facebook or X because of some privacy/security setting I must have enabled. Before that fb wouldn’t let me see anything without an account and X was pulling really similar stunts, requiring an account for full access, although usually you could read the tweet and a few replies maybe.
It is absolutely bullshit for ALL the information to be on a social media post. I’ve definitely gotten them before with age and suspect/vehicle or something, and Twitter would have photos and further details like last seen location and clothes.
I don’t X anyways. All notifications are blocked.
You would have gotten this one, because it was a Wireless Emergency Alert, not a Xhitter notification.
Bro. Just use SMS for that stuff.
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.
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 feels that 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.
That’s true. I’m thinking of the subscribe/follow aspect.
Amber alerts do go out via phone alerts to everyone in the area. They’re probably just supplementing that with a Twitter post since you can refer back to it.
It never fails to frustrate and shock me when I see public entities relying on private software and platforms.
My local schools rely heavily on Windows and Google. Important Govermental notices are shared on Twitter first.
This is nuts. I really think public infrastructure should be mandatorily tied to open and free solutions.
Our police do the same in Australia with Facebook and I can’t view them
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 both - Mastodon is easier to follow with notifications, and the official site serves more of an archival purpose.
They do that as well. The social media post will contain a brief synopsis and will link to a government website for more information.
Why? As long as the host it and moderate it, why does it matter that the platform’s code was created as social media?
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.
I hope many organizations and groups follow suit.
If you think Twitter is ever going to give you real news again, you deserve to have your face eaten by leopards.
That’s because conservatives are pedophiles who sex-traffic children.
The mobile carriers and device OEM’s already participate directly in the Amber alert program. Why is X even part of this?
The problem isn’t the alert itself, it’s that cops put Twitter links in the alert. If you want to see what the car, suspect, or victim look like, you need to be able to access Twitter.
Police have been doing this for years now. It’s a fast a cheap way to microblog without buying or supporting something with the city’s budget.
Why the hell doesn’t FBI or some other fed agency create tools for shit like this? Why is every city reinventing the wheel?
Because they dont allow marijuana users in government jobs
Can’t have those ticket funds going to digital infrastructure when you gotta get up armored trucks to deal with protesters.
Yup funds, and the web traffic handleability.
My small city (population 89,000) had a 911 outage about 2 years ago. Their solution was to sms text or voice dial everyone with the message “…please dial any county non-emergency number… see a list of numbers at bitly.url…”. The hosted website was hugged-to-death.After fines, it was inevitably cheaper to extend the nearest net backbone closer to our neck of the woods and upgrade all county things with fiber and data centers.
Paywall.
Why can’t they just put the information in the alert directly? That’s what the Koreans did when I was there. Why this extra indirection in the first place?
going to assume it’s easier to hire a social media intern then train on a cms to post to a website.
It’s really not. Even crappy interns can learn quickly to post to a CMS.
However, that’s not what was being suggested here. Just…include the details in the alert that actually gets sent?
That’s what happens in my part of the US as well.
Possibly laziness and/or wanting to link to an “official” source.
Instead of publishing 34 more alerts, a interested person could just follow the account.
Or link to an official website with the details.
Yeah, that was my thought. Put a page on their government website. I would recommend their state department of homeland security for emergency services
Make a subpage: https://www.caloes.ca.gov/office-of-the-director/operations/homeland-security/
Their mission statement on that site fits perfectly with it:
“We protect California by leveraging partnerships, bolstering capabilities, illuminating threats, sharing intelligence and advancing the Homeland Security Strategy.”
