Japanese disaster prevention X account can’t post anymore after hitting API limit - The issue has arisen after major Tsunami warnings have been issued in areas of Japan following a strong earthquake::undefined
Why governments would ever use a private service for critical use baffles me.
Create your own emergency notification system!
They have one, but you also want information to be where people are. Especially if where people are is full of misinformation and rumours.
Japan has various earthquake notification systems. Tweets are just one more way to get the information to the people on a platform they use.
Create your own emergency notification system!
Those never turn out well.
Running their own mastodon instance should be viable though.
I remember seeing that they did have a fediverse account? This seems related to that
Yup see here:
It’s also in the article linked above:
Luckily, the creators of the NERV App, Gehirn Inc, have created an app-based alternative for users to get information in real-time, as well as running a Mastodon account.
The Los Angeles/ California earthquake alert system worked just fine today.
Does that go through regular EAS? Wondering.
FWIW, Japan does have emergency alerts on iOS and Android, same thing as the Netherlands and the UK.
Is Mastodon even viable for time sensitive information? You need to wait for your instance to propagate the post from their instance which can take time.
As opposed to waiting until next month for your API call limit to reset?
I’d suggest they join a system that has users, proper SLA and an open frontpage.
As much as you might like Mastodon for being open, there are no SLA between instances. Bluesky or Threads likely do.
Not saying they shouldn’t start their own Mastodon, but not for emergency and time sensitive things. Or just for people who can’t access those other services. More options also mean more reach.
They made their own: https://unnerv.jp/@UN_NERV
Is Twitter/X viable for that? They can decide, and have, to randomly put information behind login walls.
They technically still have an SLA, but it’s unclear how much they respect it. And if X isn’t viable there are other platforms that are.
SLA? If that means something like “service level agreement” (I don’t know, you didn’t specify, I’m guessing) then I can still find examples where it falls well below what I would expect from a public service such that if there was an agreement in place that I would definitely be opposed to it as a tax payer.
And if X isn’t viable there are other platforms that are.
I mean yes obviously, there are much more viable platforms like Mastodon, or even a self-hosted website.
And again, which was the point of my original comment, Mastodon may not do great when you need to propagate the post to other platforms. Unless you know something I don’t, Mastodon is horrible for time sensitive information, since it can take hours to get to your instance.
Just mass send SMSs in a given area
It’s a secondary feature of a mysterious enterprise, unknown to americans, called “public media”
Cell phones already have the emergency alert system they could just use that.
One thing I wish iOS/Android did was have the option for these emergency alerts to be multilingual, or provide some sort of auto translation. When i was in Japan in November, I received an emergency alert due to NK launching some missiles. It’s pretty scary to have your phone blow up with a loud alarm, and not being able to read the alert because it’s in Japanese. On iOS, you also can’t just copy the notification to translate it. I had to take a picture, and then have Google Translate translate it.
I was anticipating some big earthquake, but turned out to be a child playing with his rockets.
I’m able to take a screenshot and translate this comment in the photos app in iOS.
Edit: I have no idea how good the translation is, but I’ve done it this way for things that needed translation.
You’re right, but that was my point, you have to take a screenshot and translate it. It wasn’t something I thought about when my phone was blasting out a loud alarm.
In those kind of emergencies, either it should’ve been auto translated to the users’ default language, or a quick translate option should be available.
Remember when just about every government employee was carrying around a BlackBerry device for official business?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
That’s different. They had signed contacts and were legally obligated to provide service. Twitter is a free service that can be turned off at any time, with no notice, and is run by a schizophrenic twat with a god complex. It’s just monumentally stupid to put lives on the line through a service like that.
I remember when they all loved the Nextel PTT phones.
This same issue happened during wildfire season in BC, Canada if I recall. A small polite media outrage over it, then forgotten.
Best case scenario would be an independent, international system developed within and for the emergency services community worldwide. Judging by the way firefighters travel internationally to fight forest fires worldwide, the community could be strong enough to support a solution like that, in my opinion.
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For reference, the article I’m referring to:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/twitter-policy-change-hampers-drivebc-1.6894793
“Social media’s reliability in emergencies questioned after Twitter limit blocks DriveBC posts” (Jul 12).
Whether a provincial traffic account posting emergency info counts as news links for these large companies or not, it’s a pretty ugly look for them to have been blocking emergency information, and it doesn’t look any better now 6 months later.
The whole thing is pretty typical (Canadian) government “not enough, and too late” -style regulation regardless, but these social media sites could think twice about playing the villain so readily in response.
It makes a lot of sense to post where the people are. Roll your own and note the people need your app/etc. granted, everyone is reading X on their smartphone and I’m 100% positive that Japan has the same kind of emergency broadcast system that we have in North America, but again that’s not meant for lots of messages, where a social networking site is.
Hate to say it but I would commonly get alerts from Twitter in the before times about local issues before I would get notified by my local government. Sadly they switched to encrypted radios so I can’t even keep up that way either these days
NERV isnt owned by gov and:
Luckily, the creators of the NERV App, Gehirn Inc, have created an app-based alternative for users to get information in real-time, as well as running a Mastodon account.
Because it’s often easier, cheaper, and more efficient in cases that mirror public needs. Alerting, SMS, cloud storage, all are solved and competitively priced. And don’t get me wrong, there ARE use cases for doing certain things custom or internally. There will need to be a mix of things.
The issue, is having an appropriate SLA and having the ability to hold companies accountable when it’s not met. You need stated provisions that won’t happen. Most commercial enterprises already operate under this model successfully, however many of the tools don’t have SLAs around an earth quake. Most companies are willing to provide those provisions but it totally will come with extra cost which is typically not budgeted or sales teams or contracting officers are not equipped to have these conversations.
This is reason #856632 that you don’t put vital government services on fucking Twitter.
Reminds me of Canada’s emergency alert system.
A custody mixup happens a 5 hour drive away with the child last seen an hour ago? Top priority notification to every device capable of receiving SMS. And then a second one in French. And then a third one because they forgot to give any details about who or what to look for. And then a fourth one in French. And then a fifth one because they settled the mix-up. And then a sixth one in French.
Again, they are IMPOSSIBLE to turn off through general device settings because they’re sent at the presidential level (aka. “nuclear launch detected”-level threat).
But an active shooter is going on a killing spree dressed as an officer? Better hope you’ve liked and subscribed to the right police association on Twitter! Because only one of them sent out anything, and nobody sent out an emergency notification at any level.
The difference being a team of 10 high up administrators took 1 hour to write each of the messages regarding the child.
Active shooter? Good luck getting ANY credible info until after police have killed them. IC, EOC, Unified Command all have to get together and push out the same message.
As others have said, there’s a reason why you wait for verified information through proper channels.
How about “If you’re around [TownName], get to shelter; people are being shot”?
They don’t need long for an earthquake, then they shouldn’t need long for a situation where people have already started dying.
… because PDF Warning: 1/2 of active shooter scenarios are over in 5 minutes. Like earthquakes, we don’t get warning minutes before the event because of seismometers and +$100,000,000 in detection and automated warning systems. With easily verifiable information and buildings built to resist them.
If you’re at a university, they’re required to have mass alert systems. They also know their community and can push it to the people who were smart enough to give their college their actual phone number rather than some random shit or not bother to update it when they changed their number.
Everyone else though? Good luck dropping a geofenced 911 alert with actually relevant information besides what people should already know. Run, Hide, Fight. It’s literally all that’s sent out in any of those college emergency alerts. MAYBE a hall location/area if they got non-panicked lucky info with someone calling Security instead of 911.
After action reports, and debriefs are easily available for most of these events if you want to read them. The FBI and DHS have a LOT of info too.
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2022-042623.pdf/view
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nova_Scotia_attacks
This one lasted hours, and the killer was known to be impersonating a police officer.
If they could send an official tweet, they could use the Alert Ready system.
I don’t think you understand how infrequent mass shooters are. Nor how predictable lol.
Are you quoting the timeline? Is the alert ready system something unique to Canadia? Does it geofence? Who needs to approve it? How does 911 or equivalent contact them. Do they have it? Do you need supervisor approval? Is your supervisor even there or is he shitting? Half your recent 911 calls in the last 5 minutes have hung up after 20 seconds. Most of them just screaming. Can you triangulate? Do you hang up? Are your other coworkers getting calls too or did you get the only person who had their phone in class because they didn’t let their teacher take it?
Life is vastly more intricate and complicated than any of you think in serious situations.
During the hours and hours that the mass shooting took place, they could have used the Alert Ready system. The process to send out an Amber Alert is often measured in minutes rather than hours, which makes sense – the process was designed to disseminate information as quickly as possible
Again, they are IMPOSSIBLE to turn off through general device settings
I don’t know about your phone, but at least in mine, they can in fact be turned off in general device settings. There’s a “Wireless emergency alerts” section in the options, under which you can individually toggle Extreme Alerts, Severe Alerts, Amber Alerts, and Tests
Those toggles don’t work because, in Canada, everything is sent at the Presidential Level, which might be above “Extreme Alerts”.
I had to basically plug my phone into my computer to access adb (a command line tool) to deactivate them.
On my old phone, I was able to make the sound at least respect DND. I don’t know if it’s a Samsung vs. Google thing, or if it’s an Android version thing.
Canada ignores complaints because if people got the alert, it’s working.
Android ignores complaints because it’s Canada’s problem, and why would anyone want to completely deactivate all alerts? (Which I’ve done – I don’t even get texts anymore, which I actually want. But it was all or nothing.)
Oh, I didn’t realize. I am in Canada, I turned them off a few months ago after my third amber alert this year for someone at the far end of the province (how likely am I to be able to help someone a 30 hour drive away???) and haven’t gotten one since, but it must just be coincidence. That’s annoying.
I guess it’s up to the phone manufacturer to decide whether the presidential level can be turned off or not
Did you disable all texting in order to avoid the alerts? Just how often did you get them!
No, I disabled the emergency alert feature. I don’t know if they come through over SMS in the end, or if they have their own special “lane” that got blocked.
I was hoping I’d still get the text, but I didn’t.
The issue wasn’t with the frequency (maybe one set every few months) so much as the issue was with my phone blaring an alarm at any hour of the day (say, 3am when you’re asleep) that doesn’t respect DND or volume settings on my phone.
That sounds like an effective solution… for things that are an immediate threat to the general population!
Yes, but not for custody disputes happening hours away with no information given about the suspect to help anyone search for the child! Lol
There are government text messages and local websites and all sorts of ways of reaching people. Unfortunately, X probably reaches ten times as many people. I think a diversified approach makes sense.
That being said, us gov has sent the text messages and that seems to be the best way to do it. Everyone has a phone. And if you don’t, then you like to live on the edge.
All cell phones connected to a Japanese network received a notification regardless of their carrier, brand or what apps they installed.
This is already way better than whatever reach X provides.
Yeah, and kinda renders this thread and article pointless. X serves a redundant feature. Who cares if they treated a government like any other paying customer (like shit)? Bashing X is trendy and this article is just another one. I say this never having had Twitter, nor X, and I just don’t care. I also don’t own any MuskBrands™ stock or anything.
Yeah, and kinda renders this thread and article pointless. X serves a redundant feature.
Yeah, I’m ashamed for all the text I’ve typed in now.
If so, then everything is done perfectly (why would they even bother with Twitter though).
Or any other service, that like Twitter, is a closed for profit service of a multinational for profit corporations.
The universe of stupidity is so endless that I don’t know in which direction to fight really.
On most public\political subjects people I talk to think I’m delusional, they talk how “free markets don’t work”, “regulation prevents murderous chaos”, “regulation prevents monopolies and wild capitalism” and so on.
But when it’s this kind of thing, it suddenly becomes all right for them to offload a public service to a private company. And they suddenly become optimists. Same fscking people. I once had that from a communist.
I think it’s primate psychology. Libertarian ideas are seen as delusional because these people fear chaos and the feeling of letting go. And for the same reason big corporations are seen as all right because they are familiar, there’s the feeling of order and control. Primates flock to strength.
For the same reason some people defend copyright, I think. They want hierarchy, somebody owning every recognizable picture. A master in the house.
I thin libertarian is just anarchy by another name. Regulated free market is the way to go, if you want democracy, which is the least bad, but those regulations need constant adjustment. The system need constant weeding or corruption grows.
Force platforms like Twitter to support ActivityPub from governments. Then give alerts to citizens that way. Tear down the closed walls at least for government emergency alerts.
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NERV is a private service, which rebroadcasts government emergency warnings with better representations.
It annoys me that pretty much every local government agency is on Twitter and FB and don’t even really update their own websites. It’s a shame nobody uses RSS much these days.
Not being on Twitter in this case is like shouting “RUN AWAY!” in several empty rooms and not bothering to go into the room full of people.
Emergency broadcasts should be on all platforms. You need to maximize the chance of reaching people.
Yes, I understand that they’re on Twitter and fb because that’s where their audience is. But I don’t want to be required to use Twitter or fb to read their updates, so it would be nice if they also posted to some sort of neutral platform like idk, their own websites.
They posted on mastodon though
Yes, it’s popular in Japan. In the US you won’t find local police or emergency agencies on mastodon.
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It’s almost like trying to run the world on social media was a shit tier idea.
It was a good way to offload responsibility for something actually working.
With social media the unreliability card has been played (by us, asocial nerds, killjoys and neckbeards) and beaten (by them, normal sane social successful people) 10+ years ago, so even when it’s a serious role being discussed, that card can’t be played again.
It worked pretty well for what it was created to do, then corporations and governments thought they could profit off of it. I assume they were also concerned that people were starting to talk about things they didn’t want people to talk about, like their penchant for buying and selling children.
It worked pretty well for what it was created to do
Which is the unknown variable in this conversation.
Say, for my ends social media never worked well.
It pains me to communicate with many (by my measure) friends and acquaintances, knowing that those are basically DMs on a site ran by somebody and hundreds (or maybe thousands) of employees can just read those DMs. Writing personal things there, because people refuse to be worried about being likely eavesdropped on.
In general the worst prison is the one you’ve built for yourself and locked yourself in. And to learn to sing one has to start singing.
I can understand what you mean.
I suppose on my end the reason that social media exists was as a forum for open communication with strangers that you would never actually meet in real life, generally to discuss interests and hobbies, or to just shoot the shit. I’ve never viewed it as a platform for replacing the methods we already had for communicating with people we did know in real life, such as phone, or just meeting with them face to face.
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How about avoiding commercial platforms when it comes to vitally important official communication?
They do, all phones get an emergency alert and tvs display a message. Twitter was another vector to spread the word out.
Well. Then they should tell those people who still use X that this is an unreliable source. For anything else it already is, anyway.
Or maybe if you use x you should be smart enough to understand what’s going on already lol
I don’t rate people who still use X as “smart”.
Problem is that no noncommercial platform would ever have the same coverage as a commercial one like X. People simply would not see the necessity to install it until it’s too late.
This is just a failure in government/governance.
There is literally an opportunity for every nation in the world to run it’s own social media service as a hub for government services, alerts etc. If a couple of them did it open source it could be a world standard for government. Even now the wealthiest nations are scrambling to do something like this but it’s too little, too late.
And even when they figure out software/process there’s no government infrastructure that can compete with the private sector. Amazon in particular are a scary one to me - the amount of sensitive data governments around the world casually chuck into S3 is going to end very badly for a lot of people.
We need governments to get serious about digital infrastructure and security, in the same way they ensure food security, sanitation. Digital capability is just not negotiable anymore, it’s vital.
Android & IOS have an emergency alert system that the government can use if they want to.
It doesn’t have to be an entire service. It could be a Mastodon / Lemmy node under their own control, but they should still mirror the information to other social media platforms, perhaps with a link underneath pointing to their own server as source of truth.
This is quite frankly what all NGOs, news orgs and major companies should do - federate so they can moderate their own message. Seems bizarre to me that the BBC, or UN, or NATO or whatever wouldn’t want to control their messaging this way. But realistically they do need to mirror the message out to other services.
Problem is there’s no expertise in house. The Australian government is currently scrambling to build in-house expertise with regards to project management, technical insight and recruitment. They’ve been haemorrhaging cash just trying to do those basic things via external agencies, it’s a shit show of wasted taxpayer dollars. And the contracts are only available to big firms whose owners went to school with whatever government is in power… very cool system!
Chances are your government already releases info on its sites. When was the last time you looked?
I look frequently as I am a developer that works on government sites lol
Could always go the route of an amber alert-like system being primary and then pipe the same msg to their secondary commercial platforms (like X). I’m not privy on the details but it sounds irresponsible to rely on X primarily/solely.
That’s what they’re doing, Twitter/X is only redundancy
Oh nice this sounds less worse than it seems then
I bet they spam that message through every medium they can - TV, radio, loudspeakers, phone alert, text, traffic signs, all the social media platforms.
Imagine if the only alert of the impending death wave was some federated lemmy server which was having a few network problems that day.
I get all the local disaster updates from startek.website!
So far, nothing has been reported, but I have a feeling the users will come pouring in soon!
Aaaaaaaany day now…
My house flooded. But it’s not reported, so it didn’t happen!
Kind of like the amber alert system?
The thing is, they communicate where people’s at. People gotta move
People will move if they learn that their lives are at stake by using X.
NERV already has a Mastodon server.
They already announced last year that they want to move away from Twitter.
They are using older version of Mastodon, in which it could lead to problems. They should update the software.
Gotta love stirring up old controversies for views because it’s fashionable to hate Twitter right now lol
Edit: I guess people didn’t have the healthy dose of skepticism that I felt seeing this. The Dexerto article delivers very little new information; this was a known issue back in August 2023. I suppose Dexerto, a website known for spinning up drama for views, will keep reposting this same information every time Japan has an earthquake. Hating on Twitter is fashionable, so Dexerto’s going to use that to gain views to their site.
Evaluate your sources, people.
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Love it when corporations have more power than government entities.
The dystopian future is coming faster than ever
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That crazy dystopian future where the government has to abide by the terms and conditions of private corporations. So wild. 🙄
Letting people senselessly get injured or die seems to be a common theme in Elon’s ventures, so I’m not all that surprised about this.
I feel like this is warranted:
Fuck Elon.
Come on, this is totally the japanese government’s fault. They should be aware of the limits of the services they use. How are we blaming Twitter for the incompetence of the japanese government? I get that we want to hate in Twitter but how incompetent is that team? A disaster prevention team didn’t forsee the limits of the communication services they use?
I don’t like Twitter but come on, stop shifting the blame.
Twitter worked. Elon bought it. Enshittification ensued. Twitter broke. Hmmm…
What an astute and elaborate explanation. Surely this is this answer and the guy you responded to is definitely over simplifying it.
Sounds like it’s time for governments to get off Xitter.
Everyone should.
The Evangelion app name is pure gold.
Fuck X and Musk.
What Evangelion app?
NERV is the name of the major organization in Evangelion. Gehirn Inc, the creator of this app, is the name of the predecessor to NERV in NGE. The font and red design are also the same.
Edit: Seems like the creator is a huge NGE fan and just went with it.
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The tsunami warning app is named NERV as the devs are big fans of Evangelion.
Aaaaah ok
Twitter was useless but X is just a vanity project at this point
It definitely makes headlines worse anyway
Just say twitter. Calling it “x” will literally always be silly and cumbersome.
I just call it twitter because I like dead-naming it.
Does that…do something?
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1/7 of the staff to run a company, how stupid.
Why is a critical service like disaster precention using an unreliable service like Twitter?
It’s probably one of numerous ways they try and reach people. Wouldn’t be surprised if they have it set up to spam alerts out through various mechanisms including social media. It’s just that one platform is now complete dogshit. Maybe this failure will hasten Twitter’s decline in Japan.
Why not? Wouldn’t you want information going out on every available service? They likely have info going out on Facebook as well.
Let me just pull out the old Pidgeon
@L4s Just FYI the NERV app mentioned on the article is not government official. (Althought I believe it uses government oficial APIs for earthquake detection)
That’s a bot account BTW. There’s a flag next to the name to indicate that but I guess it’s not visible on mastodon.
Yeah, it just added automatically when hitting Reply here on masto. TIL that if you delete the @ mention, it still becomes a thread :)
If you’re already replying to someone, the @ seems totally redundant.
It’s just the default way on masto, I guess for microblogging historical reasons.
But the town square!!!111
This is how I feel…
Time to switch to mastodon.
Did you even bother to read the article?
Luckily, the creators of the NERV App, Gehirn Inc, have created an app-based alternative for users to get information in real-time, as well as running a Mastodon account
Yes. They need to dump twitter
The problem here is they need to stay where the users are. It doesn’t matter if Twitter is shit, as long as that’s where people are the broadcasts need to be there to reach as many people as possible. Hell, if 90% of the people are on IRC then they should also support IRC. Dumping Twitter isn’t going to make it better, it would only mean people are less likely to get warnings -> more people in danger.
At least with a half broken app there’s still a chance.
Maybe, but a wouldn’t it be way better to rely on a service every cellphone can receive by default, namely cell broadcast?
They even implemented this in Germany a few years ago after it has been available for twenty odd years.
Pretty sure emergency mobile broadcasts are included (at least by gov agencies) but you know what happens with these things that are only used for emergencies:
“It’s annoying can’t I turn it off?”
That’s why I still think the more methods the better. It’s probably one of the few reasons I’m okay with being bombarded with messages (not in jp, but literally got 2 earthquake warnings yesterday).
It looks like Japan’s current implementation of their J-Alert system can start warning citizen about 2 seconds after the info is automatically received by the system. It warns them via nationwide loudspeakers, TV, radio, email, and cell phones. So they’ve got their bases covered, so to speak. They may be able to turn off alerts on their phone (the article doesn’t say), but probably not on anything else. Definitely not the loudspeakers.
Kind of! Their Masto feed could be an RSS that feeds into all platforms. Decentralise!!!
Switch to != just use it on the side. Drop X, loudly make clear why, and point people to Mastodon.
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In case you would benefit from a warning but they get rate limited and can’t send it.
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They are on mastodon
Oh come on man, reading articles is so 2023.
I didn’t read the article either, I just saw someone’s correction in the comments 🤷 I just wanted them to know. My use of italics probably made my comment come off as more snarky or condescending than I meant for it to :/
they should dump twitter!
Twitter? What is this, 2023? :)
Have you actually seen Japan social media usage? They’re like the second largest Twitter market in the world. Why would they be more attuned to Mastodon vs Twitter?
