Emergency preparedness experts and professionals wisely warn of peril if the unique attributes of Twitter in tracking and responding to unfolding calamities are lost
Nov 18, 2022·edited Nov 18, 2022Liked by Andy @Revkin
I have resisted Twitter, have hardly ever looked at it, & won’t really care if it vanishes. But you have reminded me that when there are wildfires near my home, that’s where I get my info, from the county sheriff’s tweets.
"If Twitter suddenly stops working or if huge swaths of the population can't access it during a crisis, the result will almost certainly be preventable suffering & death." > Seriously? "Huge swaths of the population" don't even have a Twitter account, anywhere in the world. The total user base is 5% of the population of the world. There are dozens of other ways to disseminate emergency information > it was disseminated even before Twitter was dreamed up. Sure, in the meantime we have actively dismantled public services that did just that, because, well, a dysfunctional privately-owned toxic platform is surely better.
Thanks for the input! Orr Bueno's assertion is indeed a bit histrionic but the amplifying effect of Twitter is substantial - as a two-way portal for unfolding information during widespread events. Radio, TV and online news entities rely on imagery and input. Emergency service agencies as well. And data applications like Petanbencana in Jakarta show the enormous potential yet to be tapped. I wrote about that in a couple posts but there's more here: https://developer.twitter.com/en/use-cases/build-for-good/extreme-weather/jakarta-flood
I guess we'll find out! Thanks for posting. By the way, I'm interested in what your work is like these days as an electrician. The surge of "electrify everything" funding already seems to have created a backlog of work without enough trained folks out there to do it (panel upgrades, let alone the heat pump installations etc). Get in touch if you'd like to talk! My friend Nathanael Johnson, a longtime environment-focused journalist quite early this year to become an electrician in the Bay area! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlKcdjaMp0I
I have resisted Twitter, have hardly ever looked at it, & won’t really care if it vanishes. But you have reminded me that when there are wildfires near my home, that’s where I get my info, from the county sheriff’s tweets.
Indeed. The very first functional use of Twitter for emergency awareness was the hashtag #sandiegofire in 2007.
"If Twitter suddenly stops working or if huge swaths of the population can't access it during a crisis, the result will almost certainly be preventable suffering & death." > Seriously? "Huge swaths of the population" don't even have a Twitter account, anywhere in the world. The total user base is 5% of the population of the world. There are dozens of other ways to disseminate emergency information > it was disseminated even before Twitter was dreamed up. Sure, in the meantime we have actively dismantled public services that did just that, because, well, a dysfunctional privately-owned toxic platform is surely better.
Thanks for the input! Orr Bueno's assertion is indeed a bit histrionic but the amplifying effect of Twitter is substantial - as a two-way portal for unfolding information during widespread events. Radio, TV and online news entities rely on imagery and input. Emergency service agencies as well. And data applications like Petanbencana in Jakarta show the enormous potential yet to be tapped. I wrote about that in a couple posts but there's more here: https://developer.twitter.com/en/use-cases/build-for-good/extreme-weather/jakarta-flood
I’m thinking it would not be a big loss!
I guess we'll find out! Thanks for posting. By the way, I'm interested in what your work is like these days as an electrician. The surge of "electrify everything" funding already seems to have created a backlog of work without enough trained folks out there to do it (panel upgrades, let alone the heat pump installations etc). Get in touch if you'd like to talk! My friend Nathanael Johnson, a longtime environment-focused journalist quite early this year to become an electrician in the Bay area! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlKcdjaMp0I