Members of Parliament reacted with incomprehension to a warning message from the NL-Alert system that was sent to people in Noord-Holland about the severe storm that struck on Wednesday. People were directed to Twitter for news and updates about the storm, while that medium has been inaccessible to people without an account since last weekend.
Good to hear the idiocy of an alert system being under the control of the current owner is being pointed out. The sooner twitter stops being used like this by governments etc the better off we will be.
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but is there something else (that currently exists) they can use that would get as many eyeballs on the alert? No one watches TV anymore. If they were to use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for alerts, they’d hit 90% of the population.
If they were to use Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for alerts, they’d hit 90% of the population.
Twitter used to be very reliable, that is no longer the case.
In this case they blocked access and that is the problem. Twitter decided, with no warning, to block all access without an account and logging in.
There is no guarantee this or worse will not happen again.
This broke the system in place. That is my point. Social media in private hands cannot be relied on to provide a time critical alerts like this.
The governments around the world screwed up by seeding this system to a private company that can be trusted to maintain a service. But they did it for the usual reason, it was cheap to implement.
The alert was already sent directly to everyone’s phone. The issue is that it directed people to Twitter for updates, when it could have just as easily pointed to a national weather service site.
