Technology

They have one, but you also want information to be where people are. Especially if where people are is full of misinformation and rumours.

Japan has various earthquake notification systems. Tweets are just one more way to get the information to the people on a platform they use.

Create your own emergency notification system!

Those never turn out well.

Running their own mastodon instance should be viable though.

Cell phones already have the emergency alert system they could just use that.

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.

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.

It was a good way to offload responsibility for something actually working.

With social media the unreliability card has been played (by us, asocial nerds, killjoys and neckbeards) and beaten (by them, normal sane social successful people) 10+ years ago, so even when it's a serious role being discussed, that card can't be played again.

They do, all phones get an emergency alert and tvs display a message. Twitter was another vector to spread the word out.

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.

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 this failure will hasten Twitter's 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.

That’s a bot account BTW. There’s a flag next to the name to indicate that but I guess it’s not visible on mastodon.

I read the title. Had some thoughts and opinions. After reading the article, the thoughts and opinions remain the same.

The article lists prices for next level api requests but it's 5000 dollars compared to the 100 that the non profit is already paying. They encouraged users to download their app to receive potentially life saving alerts.

I summed up the article in three sentences.

Doesn't help if people don't use it.
That said, they should definitely stop using the thing formerly known as Twitter.
Use news outlets, public radio and TV and SMS alerts, those are "correct" ways of handling such situations, social media is not.