this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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So with wildfires in Canada there's evacuation zones near me, but I can't click on some announcement links from the main site that shows the evacuation zones because they go to twitter and you need to log in now. I think they show some on other pages on the site but they do the quicklink to the twitter announcement in the sidebar so you have to click around a bit to get to it. Yes I know the name but whatever. My point being is when the social media site that was meant for short bits of info isn't good for emergency notifications where everyone can read, it's shitty and potentially harmful.
Governments should either be operating their own systems for this or, hell I don't know, why not just spin up a their ready-to-go Mastodon instance or something else in the fediverse not subject to the delirious whims of a petulant muskrat born with daddy's money?
Very much agree. I read that the Netherlands already did this!
I’m sorry - as someone who has done some work with disaster response, this was one of my main concerns. When they threatened to take away NWS access to API without huge fees, I was honestly horrified. Thankfully they reversed that decision, but a lot of what my organization did was scour Twitter for official information and also personal accounts of folks who needed help/the conditions on the ground.
It is honestly a travesty that a resource such as this can be reduced to literal 💩 when people need it the most. I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. I hope more and more folks/orgs migrate to a suitable alternative(s) sooner rather than later, but the damage has been done. There’s always a percentage who never do, and you can’t fix that.