I have never relied on twitter to get alerts like weather, fire, etc.

The Verge has a very interesting article. about the problems Elon Musk and Twitter have done to delivering alerts in case of an emergency.

I’ve never relied on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linked in, or any other social media to rely on my news for emergencies.

Before Social Media, we had our radios and TVS. Now, the emergency alerts provided on our phones can be used for very specific events like when the COVID disaster started as an example, or the riots in Down Town Los Angeles where by we were told to stay inside.

When Metro shut down the buses that one night to protect themselves from getting hurt, they tweeted out, and I do follow their Twitter.

I’m sure that if I turned on the radio, or KNX through an app, it’d have told me the same thing.

The Verge’s article is titled Disaster alert accounts are preparing for a world after Twitter/ which was an interesting read.

What do you guys think? Would you use Mastodon as a source of emergency data? I could see myself follow accounts to get updates like Metro for elevator and esculator outages, but for emergencies, they wouldn’t be tweeting out, they would be too busy helping the operators and others to help you and I get to safety. That is, unless there is enough info out like they did saying these buses are detouring, these trains aren’t stopping here, etc. That takes a dedicated team.

We’ll just have to see how this works as Twitter is slowly demolished as it seems to be. The disaster accounts delbt with it before Twitter, they’ll be fine.