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by alenrozac 1074 days ago
People will blame Twitter, but imho, a public agency should not rely solely on scale provided to it by a single private platform. It looks like they recognize it too:

> “We've been trying to use private infrastructure as public infrastructure for communications,” said Reynolds. “But it really doesn't work once things change.”
3 comments
brookst 1074 days ago
Were they exclusively using Twitter, or offering it as one of many channels so people could choose how to receive info? The former is a terrible idea, the latter is great (until things change).

I frequently drive a sometimes closed section of road with flashing “tune to AM 560 for road info” signs. It would be great if there were “follow DOT on [service]” options.

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JTon 1074 days ago
Doubtful. Canada has emergency alert systems in place over AM and FM radio, over Broadcast TV, and over SMS/cellphone. Those are the systems I'm aware of, but there may be more.
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katbyte 1074 days ago
In bc there is drivebc which is the source of truth for road conditions (with webcams)

There are also status pages for bcferries translink and wildfires

Wildfires has a webpage https://wildfiresituation.nrs.gov.bc.ca/map

An app, and a map https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/f0ac328d88c74d07aa2ee...

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e-shrdlu 1074 days ago
It looks like they had a website too, but most people went to twitter for updates
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fullshark 1074 days ago
I have no recollection if Twitter has ever claimed this is its purpose, but for all intents and purposes that was the supposed value add of Twitter wasn't it? Public figures / organizations can use our platform to communicate with the entire world near instantaneously?

Twitter has just shown it's not reliable for one of its supposed core use cases. At least if you don't buy a twitter blue account? Passing the buck here is not right either.

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helen___keller 1074 days ago
Agreed, this was already a frustration of mine. There’s been a scroll limit on Twitter from forever ago, and the most frustration I’ve experienced with social media is realizing I had to sign up for twitter if I wanted to look at the public communications going back a few hours by my local police department (at the time there was a manhunt in my neighborhood and we were being advised to stay indoors. I was spooked.)
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