This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I have a long commute in and out of a large city. Since I spend so much time on the road, I always try to get the details of Amber Alert notifications to be on the lookout for vehicles used in abductions. I guess I can't do that anymore since Twitter requires an account to see Amber Alerts. Hopefully my state finds another platform to post them.
I've been constantly amazed at how normalized it's gotten for not only other companies, but for governments, to rely so much on sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc, for essential information like Amber Alerts. Shit like this hopefully makes people more aware of how treacherous it is to rely on corporate services for public services. Maybe the gov will finally institute their own web services for public information (unlikely) or at least enact boundaries on services that have been widely adopted (slight more likely).
The data secure officer of our goverment has build a mastodon server and some official post there. I think more countries should do that. So they don't have to rely on something like Twitter or Facebook. They could do that to reach more people, but with a mastodon instace they could be independent from companies
But don't you know? They're private companies, you can dictate what they can do! They need to make money! Profits! Responsibility to shareholders! Fuck anything else!
Not sure about what carrier you use or what device you use, but I'm on AT&T using a Pixel 6a with CalyxOS, which is just de-googled Android, and on Android if you accidentally swipe away an amber alert notification you can find it again by going to:
Settings -> Safety & emergency -> Wireless emergency alerts -> Emergency alert history
But your point still stands, governments and public institutions really need to stop relying on privately owned and operated social media platforms for posting stuff like this. If they want to use a social platform to publish alerts, they would be much better off standing up their own Mastodon instance that is "just" for those alerts. People could follow those accounts if they want, and those institutions wouldn't be subject to the whims of overpaid unpredictable man children.
Thanks for the tip, I found it in my notification history.
Good info, just wanted to add on with instructions for both major mobile platforms. Depending on your specific device and version, there may be some slight differences in how the menu options are worded and you might need to expand a collapsed section in the menu to see the settings.
In my jurisdiction, Amber Alerts are delivered by SMS. Using Twitter for police notifications seems bizarre.
In my area, amber alerts are delivered via Localized Emergency Alerts, and clicking on it takes you to the Highway Patrol Twitter page.
That's crazy.
I was going to say it's crazy that your local police use a private service like Twitter, but I guess the phone companies are a private service too.
Yeah, but you're right in that phone companies are a public utility, so the government has more say in what they can do.
It does come as a notification, and I ended up finding it in my notification history.
"Lost your child? Sign in to receive updates about the search!"
(After signing in)
"You've seen too many updates. Watch an ad or subscribe to Blue to keep receiving information on your lost child."
"No chance of finding your child? Check out these great deals on dolls at Amazon.com."
I noticed I couldn't see tweets my friend would send me without creating an account, guess I won't be seeing any more tweets.
You should try if Nitter works.
From what I can tell, nitter instances are broken too.
Twitter's super power was in being a public commons. Now that all tweets are effectively locked behind a login, it's lost that power.
Agencies that built around that openness: “How could our reliance on a private entity have backfired on us like this?”
Also those same agencies: “Does anyone know a free private company we can build upon now?”
According to a twitter engineer this is temporary Source: https://twitter.com/AqueelMiq/status/1674843555486134272
Yeah... not happening.
It's hilarious that I tried to click that link, despite not having a Twitter account.
What the fuck they use twitter for THAT?!
