This morning I awoke to a map of my block covered in blue saying a warning had started 20 minutes ago, in a Facebook post from a foodie. I like to think those friendly warning sirens that blare at noon would tell me something, to begin with. Then those loud alerts that go to my phone no matter how many times I disable the setting. Then maybe text blast, granted I don't know all the ones I should be on. I just had a needless bpm added to my heart rate.
All notifications are disabled on my mobile except calls; much as people depend on them I won't let myself. Two days of disaster and everyone's battery is dead, along with ability to search the web for life skills and claim to have invented fire. Tangent, but for the doubters, I inspect routes before I drive and know my way around blind after just a few thousand miles in the city over 4 years (typical commuter is 10k/yr+). And literally nobody of consequence has complained about responding to things a few times per day in batches (around lunch, late afternoon/5).
People think I'm too intense, actually I think they're just addicts with no attention span. So one can see why I don't want to turn on Notifs for an advertising network in case there's something urgent. Oh hey, false alarm, buy some stuff and surrender some power... [just click here :D]
Twitter has spent billions to deploy a worldwide network that people engage with to communicate short status updates. They also have the content, and scale to have a large percentage of the population actually familiar with how to use their tool.
To get an equivalent reach and scale and level of familiarity with a government run tool would be a $100 billion project doomed to fail.
Should Twitter be the only way that government reaches the population to deliver critical updates? Of course not, but it absolutely must be one of the primary ways, and in many cases because the system design of Twitter is so much better, it will be the channel with the most accurate and up-to-date data.
I mean the best part of that is then Homeland can designate Twitter as “critical national infrastructure” and put their agents in the data centers! </s>