Most governments already have that... it's called a website.

Turns out they used twitter because that's where the users were.

A website is not the same as having robust infrastructure for public notifications. And to be clear-- neither is twitter, but a website you have to visit isn't as convenient or useful in an emergency where you want people to receive an alert without going to a website.

So, the requirements are more than a website, but also not a private 3rd party platform w/o service guarantees, and preferably something that doesn't have municipality, department or agency rolling their own solutions, duplicating effort, etc.

In the US the traditional systems are Emergency Alert & WEA but those don't encompass all the public awareness & notification needs that drive organizations to use something like Twitter. I'm not sure if the right answer is to expand those or creating something similar for scenarios currently outside their scope, but we could do worse than starting the conversation with that question.

Computers lack a protocol that drowns out anything and freezes your computer for broadcast alerts.

The online strategy so far, has to be where the people are, so most governments have multiple social media accounts, like Facebook and Twitter, and also websites and RSS. I’ve also seen, depending on the government, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, etc.

And, if I may, I think the point is that is all well and good, but for reliability's sake, a publicly, not privately, controlled alternative to any of the above (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, etc.) should be carefully considered. Mastodon is perfectly set up to be a valuable ADDITIONAL option for local governments using Twitter -- that doesn't mean "stop posting to Twitter," it means "also post to Mastodon" and be certain that, whatever shortcomings that may have, it's not entirely susceptible to the whims of a billionaire. Similarly, are Facebook posts by local government failing to reach users because of some change Zuck made to The Algorithm? Maybe we need to start looking into effective alternatives. If not, then we don't.

Those self-owned things, the website and RSS, already exist; all governments I’ve interacted with have one, and the subject of the article is no exception: https://news.gov.bc.ca/connect

The reality is that when it comes to spreading info to citizens you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Netherland has something like that too. We had a big storm recently. Got three alerts on my phone. It works very well. Certainly better than Twitter.

Websites don't really work that well for push-based information, nor do they provide the automatic amplification offered by social media.

Can I assume that you mean static websites, because there is nothing special about social media; Twitter is quite literally just another website.

Twitter is not just a website, it is also a platform that facilitates push notifications so that people can receive information in near real time, passively, no need to visit a website. So neither Twitter or a website alone is the answer.

But that is not entirely accurate. The website/app instance is running on the phone/device/whatever. It is not passive. The user opened it ( or opted to keep it open in background ).

In other words, 'website' is visited. Information is accessed and sent back to the requester.

> The website/app instance is running on the phone/device/whatever. It is not passive. The user opened it ( or opted to keep it open in background ).

That's not how it works. Unless it's the foreground application, the application is not running; it's not kept open in the background. Instead, what happens is that the application registers with a push notification system when the user first opens it and logs in. When the user should be notified, the website sends a message to the push notification system's central servers, which notifies the phone (the push notification system does stay open in the background, but it's shared by all applications in the phone), which then starts the application on the phone to show the notification.

Thank you for this. It always helps to understand something better.

That said, does it change twitter's status as a website that just happens to have functionality X ( push notifications )?

Can WebNotify (or whatever) work? That thing that some sites nag me with could have a purpose? Does it work on mobile?

A user gets notifications without having to look at their phone. That seems passive? Sure, prior installation & configuration of the app days/months/years beforehand was an active step but once you give it permission to send you notifications all of those notifications are received without user intervention required.

> Twitter is quite literally just another website

Well, apart from the app

It is true that on the phone the way the information is presented is through an app ( and we can argue whether it is just a more restricted browser ), but definition of a website is:

related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server

If that is the case, app is just a bastardized website.

Stop being facetious. Twitter is way more complicated to build than a static website, and even if you did you wouldn't reach the same amount of users.

Pretty much. So you use a website and for people who don't use it that's their problem. My town also (used to have?) has an automatic phone system but I don't really pick up random calls and don't have a landline now so that's useless.

>for people who don't use it that's their problem

You're evacuating, driving along a highway, and during the course of your trip the available evacuation routes change. A website is useless here.

The context of the conversation is emergency situations, that has to be taken into account when thinking about the required public notification infrastructure.

But what is reliably useful at that point? Radio maybe? I'm not sure how Twitter or a Twitter clone is any more useful than a website. Phone alerts are probably the best choice at that point assuming you don't have them turned off.

Twitter can’t be better than a website because Twitter IS a website!

What Twitter was is better than Facebook, the main other governmental alert platform.

How is it useless? You're in traffic, you check Twitter on your phone, you change your plans. I can't subscribe to an RSS feed on a phone by default

If you get a chance. You're not necessarily going to be in traffic so slow that you can safely do that. Maybe you will, maybe not. Getting an alert means you don't have to guess & keep checking. If there's an additional alert you get it and only then have figure out how to safely check it.

> You're in traffic, you check Twitter on your phone

That is illegal in B.C.

An elected official will not be satisfied with the “that’s your problem” response, because they fear those people will vote them out of office.

Yeah, I think federated is the right answer. You don't need to run a public platform, but you can run the infrastructure for government staff and announcements while still reaching the broader network.

What problems do you see with a publicly owned twitter variant?

I don't see any social network as a good answer in the context of this story. What's needed is robust public alert & notification infrastructure.

A large social platform simply cannot survive without constant moderation that goes beyond strict application of the law. You need some form of community standards in place.

A government agency governing what is acceptable speech is a bad idea.

Sounds like it would work in pretty much every country except America.

Ah yes, the world, long known for its lockstep dance of harmony.

Why would such a twitter variant need moderation? We're talking about a government notification system. Only people posting would be government officials.

If you're saying Twitter variant, that implies a social network using text+image communication. If you want a notification system instead, there are much better and usable ways to implement that. See https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/ for example.

A pure one-way notification system is not a "twitter variant", but a completely different beast altogether.

The draw of the twitter-like approach is that the government messages are a portion of an existing stream of communication that people are already using/consuming.

The article is about governments using twitter to send notifications. Lots - perhaps most - use twitter exclusively this way.

> We're talking about a government notification system.

This exists, and is called Wireless Emergency Alerts. Every phone sold in the U.S. today supports this out of the box.

Wireless Emergency Alerts are for emergencies. If you look at any government's twitter feed, the posts are either very much not emergencies, or in this post's context, too specific and numerous to use the system with. The government needs something besides a passive website and a highly active emergency alert system.

So use the alerts to instruct users to view a website or similar platform where more detail can be posted? Unless it really is an emergency, why's there a need to push so many messages to a social media feed anyway? What are they mostly about and who reads them? During Covid there was certainly at least something interesting to post fairly regularly, though nothing that wasn't already plastered all over newspaper headlines or regular TV/radio news bulletins. Even then I can't say I ever felt an additional platform was needed, and that really was an exceptional period in history.

Is NPR subject to these restrictions in the US?

Since when is NPR a government-controlled platform?

It's not, though it does get partial funding from the US government. I've been for a few weeks now to try and unpack the ramifications of public funded social media.

Blog post here: https://dynamorando.pages.dev/blog/the-public-web/

The most common refrain that I get whenever this topic comes up is "First Amendment" - meaning that public funded social media should not be in the business of moderation; though I often wonder how come NPR, PBS, BBC and so on don't run their own social media websites (based on your deciding flavor of ActivityPub instances.)

I believe the German and Dutch governments run their own Mastodon instances, I don't understand at the moment why other governments don't follow this path.

It is.

You work for who pays you.

Right. NPR works for the public.

In an international world, which govt should operate it becomes a complicated matter.

Each government should own one. It doesn't have to be federated to be useful.

The problem where a platform that is truly bound by the first amendment would lose in the marketplace, because most people don’t want to be on a platform where Nazis can post as much as they want.

Platforms that censor are going to win in the marketplace, because that’s what most people want in a discussion platform.

Once a week my phone buzzes with some sort of child-alert, abduction and/or storm warnings. How is what's needed in this case any different?

There are lots of things the government needs to disseminate that are important, but don't need to be push notifications for everyone.

Those are very annoying and usually useless, so many people turn them off (everyone I know does). And if you miss one for any of the many reasons that could occur in an emergency, I wouldn't know where to go to seek out those alerts.

So for that we blame...Twitter?

Where in my comment did I mention twitter, or imply anything about it? I was just saying that the automated phone alerts aren't a great fit for something like wildfire evacuation instructions. At the very least they shouldn't be the only avenue for that information.

Twitter was fantastic for that kind of thing though.

You didn't. But the topic is public notifications and Twitter. You seemed to imply the alternative to Twitter isn't effective, within a thread that starts with Twitter isn't effective.

People die or get injured in my region annually during flash floods, snow storms, etc., so most people don't turn off these alerts. The ones who get hurt are the unlucky or disadvantaged or people who ignore the alerts.

Child alert systems find about 50 or 60 kids a year (US). Turning them off is a pretty shit move for the ~dozen per year that come through.

> if you miss one for any of the many reasons that could occur in an emergency(

"It's not perfect so why bother?" Is an odd attitude. Per the above, I keep on emergency weather alerts even though I might miss some.

>I wouldn't know where to go to seek out those alerts.*

You can fix that. I know where to go for such things during adverse weather events, and when an AMBER alert has been issue for a kid I'm often curious enough to see if it's been called off a few hours later.

> Child alert systems find about 50 or 60 kids a year (US). Turning them off is a pretty shit move for the ~dozen per year that come through.

As far as I know, the only options on my phone for these alerts are "deafeningly loud alarm" and "entirely disabled." After my phone woke me up at 3 AM for some kid being abducted in some other town, it's now off permanently. I did the same for weather alerts after it destroyed my ears to tell me about some flash flooding alert on some street across town that I will never use.

There is literally no situation in which my phone making a deafeningly loud alarm is acceptable, so I turn all those alerts off to make sure it doesn't happen again. If the implementation were better, I might leave them on. But it isn't, so I don't.

No situation at all? What if you were on that street?

Then it should vibrate like any other notification. There is no situation I can think of that is improved by someone at city hall having the ability to make every phone in the area scream at full volume, versus just behaving like a normal notification.

>There is no situation I can think of

The horizons of your thinking appear to be truncated to somewhere within a few dozen yards and ~10 minutes of your current time & location. Can you think of no incident where there was an otherwise avoidable death or injury that could have been prevented with a timely alert?

Not one that couldn't have been equally well handled by a normal notification, no.

I'm not quite clear on this-- are you maintaining that stance only with respect to yourself, or for all people across society in all situations?

For me, it is unacceptable for my phone to ever make a noise that I did not ask it to make. I can't think of any situation in which this is not true. A normal notification will get my attention just fine. If I have to choose between deafening noise and no notification, I will choose no notification every time.

I think there should be a third option, which is to treat them like normal notifications. This is so obvious to me that I'm utterly baffled that it isn't an option. We probably wouldn't even be having this discussion if the option existed. But it doesn't, so here we are.

I would even OK with deafening noise being the default. I would argue that it shouldn't be the default, as I think the false-alarm problem is a serious one that will cause people to just turn it off. But I understand the other side of the argument.

My opinion is anything that causes a bunch of deafening noise from every phone in the vicinity should be treated with the same level of gravity as turning on the tornado siren. We don't turn on the tornado siren for every kid who gets lost or every flooded road. We shouldn't be blowing up every phone for those events, either. Tornado coming to town? Ok, blow up the phones. Missile coming down from the sky? Ok, blow up the phones. City-destroying wildfire coming in? Ok, blow up the phones. Kid got in the wrong car? Berry St is flooded? Sorry, those doesn't qualify for the tornado alarm, so they don't qualify for blowing up phones either.

Okay, then it's just a matter of you & I drawing the line in different places, and maybe yours is further out due to less likelihood of dangerous weather conditions, or the thrill of potentially having an unscheduled white-water rafting experience through the town, or personal preference. I can see your point about the defaults. Cheers!

So you've determined that you are a exception in so far as never being in any potential danger from something covered in the contents of a emergency alert.

This does not counter argument that the GGP comment is incorrect in labelling these systems "mostly useless"

I interpreted their comment as saying the specific alerts that user receives are useless to them. I definitely agree with that. If enough people feel as we do and turn the alerts off, then yes, I think the system itself does become useless. I don't know how many people turn them off.

This could be avoided by making the implementation less terrible. I don't know how we arrived at the current situation where they're either deafening, or entirely off. It seems really stupid to me that those are the only options. I would prefer to receive them, but it's not worth waking me up at 3 AM for a flooded road 20 miles away.

>If enough people feel as we do and turn the alerts off, then yes, I think the system itself does become useless. I don't know how many people turn them off.

That's like saying x = x. Of course if people don't use the system, the system isn't being useful. Contrary to that hypothetical, I am making the observation that people do use the system and often find it useful.

Sure, that's a fair take. My comment was more responding to your comment saying that turning off alerts is a "shit move," by explaining why many of us choose to turn them off.

One challenge with AMBER alerts is that they don't provide enough information for the receiver to determine if the alert reflects a credible danger to a child, or if it's a nuisance alert where the system is being abused during a custody battle. Further, the very nature of a highly disruptive, high volume alert like this is to encourage the public to take extreme action -- e.g. following a vehicle -- that increases danger for both the involved child and everyone else in the area. While there are attempts to fix this very broken system (e.g. [1]), for now I very much consider the cure to be potentially worse than the disease.

[1] https://kutv.com/news/local/law-introduced-for-new-criteria-...

>e.g. following a vehicle... the cure to be potentially worse than the disease

I'm not aware of citizen vehicle chases being a systemic problem. What other offsetting problems exist that negate the benefits of the system? I don't consider annoyance/disturbance to be sufficient to say it's worse than the disease (which implies it should be stopped, pending overhaul) especially considering the ability to turn the alerts off.

It's not possible to turn off alerts of the highest authority, "Presidential alerts", without turning off the phone. All basemodem and smartphone manufacturers selling in North America hardcode this into the black box part of the firmware. (Which is part of the approval process and why you'll never be able to buy a 'fully unlocked' phone.)

For example in Ontario, every alert is sent out at this authority.

Surely SMS is more than sufficient as an emergency broadcast system. Which is one reason the increasing number of SMS spam/phishing messages is more than just a nuisance, it's seriously eroding trust in the system. I know people now that basically assume every SMS not from a known contact is spam. Governments should have a vested interest in actually doing something concrete to tackle it, I'm not even sure why it's so hard to solve.