News @lemmy.world stopthatgirl7 @kbin.social 8mo ago

X Kicked Off 2024 by Screwing Up During Japan's Earthquake Emergency

www.vice.com X Kicked Off 2024 by Screwing Up During Japan's Earthquake Emergency

As misinformation proliferated on X thanks to verified users, a massive account sharing accurate information hit its Musk-imposed posting limit.

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Twitter did eventually get its shit together and lift the API limits on NERV’s accounts, but people on JP Twitter were furious, and “Elon” in Japanese (イーロン) was trending, with people basically cussing him out for effing up Twitter by limiting NERV and getting rid of the chronological timeline. Folks were also upset at all the “reply zombies” (blue check bot accounts) commenting complete garbage like “nice” and “happy new year” in posts about the earthquake.

As for misinformation, the evening of the quake “人工地震” (manmade earthquake) was trending on Twitter, and NHK news yesterday actually had a segment on last night explaining that no, the quake was not manmade, and that misinformation was being spread on Twitter.
- Where there Angels emerging from the epicenter of the earthquakes?
- So how have Twitter fucked up here then? NERV isn't a government body, it isn't an official public safety channel, it's a private not for profit organisation. The official government ones already have no limits, it's just everyone in Japan uses NERV because they're so damned good.
  
  Now, I don't agree with API charges (much like data charges for internet, they aren't proportionate to cost) but setting that aside, NERV didn't automatically deserve the exemption and never even tried to get it.
  
  Musk has still made a shit system, but it's not shit because of this event.
  
  Maybe if he hadn't fired 85% of his employees, there might have been someone who checked alerting accountsand made sure no api limits applied, but nope. Dude fired so many people the simple, basic shit isn't getting done.
  
  I think the counter to everything you said is that all the pressure and anger on Twitter over Nerv getting API limited got them registered as a Public Utilities App so they could tweet automatically. They’d been trying to get registered as such for a while but Twitter doing do it until AFTER an emergency and “イーロン” (“Elon”) was trending on Jp Twitter because people were so angry.
  
  This is an issue that never should have arisen.
  
  X fucked up by imposing the limit in the first place.
The idea that centralized social media should serve as an emergency broadcasting system is....a bad one. It's only guarantee is that ads are to be served alongside propaganda.
- People are too stupid. Think of how we don't teach dolphins tricks, just harness the ones they already know. Can't convince people to download a "save your life" app. Have to just take advantage of what they're willing
  
  mass sms to everyone work, and there's even a whole "emergency alert" system built into both Android and ios. it's used all the time in America for things like missing children.
- Well I would like a federal app that had Federal, state, and city only feeds. But that would cost money and people hate taxes. Don't need your real name, read only and can get push notifications and see what is going on in the state, city.
Too bad they don't just open their own instance and post there, unlimited. It was always a bad idea to put public safety information channels in private hands.
- They have their own Mastodon instance and have since 2017. They also have an app. They were telling people to get the app once they realized they were being API limited.
  
  But people in Japan have trusted Twitter for emergency info since the big Tohoku earthquake and still go there for information. Elon wrecked that trust.
  
  Its maddening how hard it is to get people to move socials. Maybe this will be the People's wake up call. It really illustrates the point that most people just want to be where everyone else is.
  
  Glad to hear they've taken the right steps. Hopefully it's still running when/if they can get the people to shift over.
A public utility shouldn’t depend on a for-profit platform
- I think the problem is people use Twitter as a public utility instead of there actually being a public utility. I can only speak to the US but I think all we've got is mass notifications for emergencies.
Individual countries should start seizing twitters servers and running their own local version that anyone in the world can participate in.

This way they can insure mongrel trash like musk can't interfere with emergency notices.
- No need to seize anything. Deploy a Government Mastodon instance and run a PSA informing the public that the Mastodon is the official channel for emergency communications.
  
  Germanys government has a own mastodon instance up and running. And while different institutions moved away from Twitter over there, citizen do not follow because "there is nobody using mastodon I know" or "mastodon is too complicated"
  
  I agree with your solution wholeheartedly.
I'd be laughing if I wasn't horrified.

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