Mastodawn

Davidcccmccoy Jul 3, 2023

Fabio Manganiello

#Twitter going rogue has much deeper implications than the Musk saga with all of its daily bullshit.

Let's not forget that, before the buffoon oligarch took over, Twitter used to be a place where government and scientific entities used to post (and they still post) information that may be crucial for the population. Twitter used to be the primary place for announcements about earthquakes, eruptions, pandemics, tsunamis, weather alerts, shootings etc.

How does that cope with a reality where external APIs are basically shut down, their unofficial frontend API is no longer working either, viewing is only possible through registered accounts, and even those accounts have a cap on the number of posts that they can consume?

How can a service with such heavy constraints around monetization still be considered a viable way of delivering messages that matter for the whole population?

As an example, one of the few Twitter accounts that I still follow (mirrored on the Fedi) is the one of INGV - the Italian Institute for geology and vulcanology.

I've got my good reasons, as I was born in a city (Naples) that may be soon blown up by the eruption of the largest European supervolcano (Campi Flegrei).

As my parents and relatives are now sitting just 1-2 km above several square km of magma, I obviously follow any updates that the INGV Twitter account posts about earthquakes in the area, with an automated system of alerts in place.

How does that cope with a service that lets users see only a few hundreds of tweets per day, and where you need bullshit like being registered, verified etc. to reliably access the content?

Can you imagine a tsunami alert system in Japan that alerts only those who paid for a platinum alert subscription, and only if they haven't already consumed their budget of 5 yearly alerts?

Twitter must be abandoned RIGHT NOW by any institutional accounts that post stuff that can make the difference between life and death of people.

Reggie Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight It took many years to build Twitter into what it is today worldwide. It’s not going to be replaced easily. Such a frustrating situation.

Fabio Manganiello Jul 2, 2023

@regll I think that at least in Europe we've got a legislative way out. We should clearly state that, if you're a public institute that gets public money to alert the population about critical updates, then you must use publicly available services with open APIs and no paywalls / registration walls.

Public money for public services that operate in the public interest should mean public infrastructure.

tessarakt Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight @regll Using Twitter is already problematic due to GDPR reasons.

I wonder how many privacy statements of e.g. public institutions state that, yes, they publish information on Twitter, but you can view that anonymously because you don't need to be logged in. Clearly wrong now ...

@noybeu, are you already looking into this?

arclight Jul 3, 2023

@blacklight @regll They should not post there _exclusively_. If they want tell Facebook or Twitter users about volcanos or tornados or other sever conditions, great - keep people informed and safe. But don't make public safety hinge on subscribing to a private commercial service, even (or especially) if it's touted as "free".

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@regll @blacklight Sure is a good thing the tech to replace it easily for alerts predates it and is still functional & mature.

Marshall Eubanks Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight
"Can you imagine a tsunami alert system in Japan that alerts only those who paid for a platinum alert subscription, and only if they haven't already consumed their budget of 5 yearly alerts?"

Sure, I can easily imagine an oligarch thinking that is the way things should be done.

Solar Man 2022 Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight Although there are multiple social media sites, none have the name brand and reach that twitter had. Lets see if the income they project from the blue checkmark sales outweighs all users they are going to lose watching advertisements because they will not pay the subscription fee.

Calum Jul 6, 2023

@solarman2022 @blacklight Facebook has a much larger reach then Twitter, even pre-Musk it had five times as many daily active users.

Osma A 🇫🇮🇺🇦Jul 2, 2023

The time Twitter worked was a unique period in human communication history. For all its problems, which it had many, it was a powerful force for transparency. None of that remains - which some say was Elon's goal all along. Perhaps, perhaps not - but we create an even better, more democratic, impossible to shut down version of that transparency on a protocol nobody owns and no one party can control.

@blacklight
https://social.platypush.tech/@blacklight/110643421209559760

Fabio Manganiello (@[email protected])

#Twitter going rogue has much deeper implications than the Musk saga with all of its daily bullshit. Let's not forget that, before the buffoon oligarch took over, Twitter used to be a place where government and scientific entities used to post (and they still post) information that may be crucial for the population. Twitter used to be the primary place for announcements about earthquakes, eruptions, pandemics, tsunamis, weather alerts, shootings etc. How does that cope with a reality where external APIs are basically shut down, their unofficial frontend API is no longer working either, viewing is only possible through registered accounts, and even those accounts have a cap on the number of posts that they can consume? How can a service with such heavy constraints around monetization still be considered a viable way of delivering messages that matter for the whole population? As an example, one of the few Twitter accounts that I still follow (mirrored on the Fedi) is the one of INGV - the Italian Institute for geology and vulcanology. I've got my good reasons, as I was born in a city (Naples) that may be soon blown up by the eruption of the largest European supervolcano (Campi Flegrei). As my parents and relatives are now sitting just 1-2 km above several square km of magma, I obviously follow any updates that the INGV Twitter account posts about earthquakes in the area, with an automated system of alerts in place. How does that cope with a service that lets users see only a few hundreds of tweets per day, and where you need bullshit like being registered, verified etc. to reliably access the content? Can you imagine a tsunami alert system in Japan that alerts only those who paid for a platinum alert subscription, and only if they haven't already consumed their budget of 5 yearly alerts? Twitter must be abandoned RIGHT NOW by any institutional accounts that post stuff that can make the difference between life and death of people.

Mastodon

McOchAyeTheNoo Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight looks like #SocialMedia is #Evolving…. Adapt or #Extinct #Twitter + #Musk #Ego = total ongoing spiralling failure….

Kat Ravenwolf Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight Twitter is disgusting. Even all say that. I actually told my friend who uses that is his main awareness platform for his streaming, to get the hell off of there, considering he does run his own plate on instant. I basically told him, hey, you run it, you pay for it, use it. Lol.

Litzz11 Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight Elon branding Twitter as a global town square while doing everything in his power to keep it from being an actual global town square is the story. He’s stupid but he’s not dumb. What is actually happening is intentional.

Doreen32128 ready to rumble!Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight 🎯🎯

Grant 🇺🇦ArmUkraine🇺🇦Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight Yes. The reason twitter was purchased by musk and his Saudi/RW investors was to destroy democratic institutions and the fabric of democracy.The goal all along was to destroy it/us.

otlg30 Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight This is a good post and raises a huge part of why what is going on over there is beyond dangerous.

That said I don't believe the official reason given is the real one. I think Elmo just screwed up (again).

That said Twitter can no longer be considered 'reliable' IMHO.

Aviva Gary Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight You are thinking about this like a hopefilled happy human who just wants the best for people... that is NOT what Twtitter and its current backers are.

They don't care. Never did.

Twitter became what it was IN SPITE of all that stuff... it was always people (the good ones like you) who did this.

Good news: we can do it again (it just takes time).

Catweazle Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight, no need of Musk's private blog, there are several sites which shows earthquakes in real time in a World map.
https://earthquaketrack.com/recent

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=-45.8288%2C-153.10547&extent=75.00494%2C104.76563

Even an app for smartphone
https://sismo.app

Today's Earthquakes

Earthquake locations and epicenters today and in the last few days - the most recent earthquakes

Bob Mottram :debian:Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight There were ways for public emergency information to get out before Twitter and there will be ways after. At a minimum, things like earthquake/tsunami/flood monitoring sites should have some RSS or other feed that you can subscribe to, or an API for use by an app, without Musk being a gatekeeper.

Fabio Manganiello Jul 2, 2023

@bob I was indeed still using RSS for most of my alert feeds - but they just happened to point at Twitter (through my Nitter bridge), because all the alert channels were there.

Of course you can configure alerts on RSS feeds, but that requires technical knowledge - plus a lot of filtering to figure out if an alert impacts the area where you actually are.

An alerting system must be idiot-proof and work out of the box when you buy a smartphone - I think that the Dutch NL-Alert system is a good example for it. It's also used by 94% of the population.

Twitter was never supposed to be the place for public alerting systems, but it was basically open to everyone until Musk took over, so people started considering it like a public service and forgot that was a private for-profit business.

And solutions like alerts based on RSS feeds can be very powerful, but you're unlikely to achieve a >90% population coverage with it.

“Twitter used to be the primary place for announcements about earthquakes, eruptions, pandemics, tsunamis, weather alerts, shootings etc.”

OK, reality check: Twitter has been that place for less than a decade. We somehow got important information before that, and can find ways to do it again without it. Transitions are disruptive but we’ll figure it out.

…

Yes I support your point though, no matter how convenient it is, services like Twitter should only be an added channel, not the main mode of communication.

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight We should all just go back to #RSS / #Atom + #email (in other words, pull + [optionally] push), as that stuff should always have been.

Seirdy Jul 2, 2023

@lispi314 @blacklight Isn’t that basically how the OStatus ecosystem worked?

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@Seirdy @blacklight I couldn't say, I hadn't heard of it prior to now (or at least hadn't looked in it it at all).

#OStatus seems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus) to indeed rely on those technologies I mentioned and looks complementary with them.

OStatus - Wikipedia

Fabio Manganiello Jul 2, 2023

@lispi314 @Seirdy I think that the first requirement here is "an emergency alerting system should be something dumb-proof that ideally should come pre-installed on any device with a SIM card without any further configuration".

I mentioned NL-Alert (the alerting system we have in the Netherlands) because it's simple, it works on any phone that has the "emergency broadcast" enabled in the settings (which AFAIK is kind of the default), and it only relies on the broadcast messages implemented by all the mobile carriers to deliver content - almost nothing is running on the software side, except the OS handler that receives those messages and shows an alert. As a result, 94% of the Dutch have it enabled.

If we want more tweaking, of course we can grab OStatus or any messaging broadcast standard - even ActivityPub itself. Even something as simple as a lightweight RSS/Atom feed with a tight polling would do it - and if you want to go fancier you can also configure something based on UnifiedPush like ntfy to deliver real-time mobile notifications without relying on Firebase etc.

But that would increase adoption barriers for anyone who isn't fluent in tech - and you really want an alerting system to be configurable by literally everyone with a single tap in their OS settings. If a volcano blows up would I want only those who know how to configure notifications on an RSS feed to be saved? Well, better not ask this question to my cynical twin I guess...

Also, the least amount of software is involved, the best. If you were to release a real-time government alerting system for all the citizens as an app, that app will immediately become the favorite target for hackers - besides risking being mistrusted by those who would mistrust any 3rd-party app on their phones released/sponsored by the government. It definitely has to be implemented on the OS side, like the existing emergency broadcast settings or the COVID-19 exposure notifications engine.

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight @Seirdy I can agree to a point with the alerting system, but not in exclusivity (both is good) as that is entirely unusable for those without functional mobile phones or with phones that require proprietary software to make that functional whom have removed that software.

As for software trustworthiness, making it verifiable #FreeSoftware would go a long way.

The Covid stuff failed to do that here because they insisted on tying it into Google's infrastructure for no real reason.

Seirdy Jul 2, 2023

@lispi314 @blacklight These options are not mutually exclusive

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@Seirdy @blacklight Indeed, a plurality of options along with sane defaults is the way to go, I'd think.

Fabio Manganiello Jul 2, 2023

@lispi314 @Seirdy The COVID exposure notification system is actually a good case study.

Europe proposed DP-3T, that still I consider to this date a good solution. It was an open and transparent protocol, there are even open-source servers for it (https://github.com/RadarCOVID/radar-covid-backend-dp3t-server), and, unlike its main competitor (PEPP-PT), it didn't even require uploading contact logs to a centralized server.

However, time was tight, a pandemic was raging, and Apple+Google at some point went like "look, do we want to spend a couple of months/years to reach consensus on an open protocol, and make sure it's implemented properly by all the vendors, or just the two of us go ahead, pick some ideas from DP-3T, implement them on-the-fly, et voila', you have >95% of the smartphone users in the world immediately covered?"

I still consider it a very painful trade-off. Of course I would have liked to see an open protocol with 100% FOSS software to be in charge of it, but the pragmatic side of me knows that, in that situation, it would have taken away more precious time.

The thing is that ideally we shouldn't have reached that stage. You shouldn't think of how to alert everyone during an emergency only when emergency strikes. But I guess that it's part of human nature to dismiss any danger that we perceive as unlikely and always be unprepared when it strikes...

GitHub - RadarCOVID/radar-covid-backend-dp3t-server: DP^3T Radar COVID fork

DP^3T Radar COVID fork. Contribute to RadarCOVID/radar-covid-backend-dp3t-server development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight @Seirdy I don't consider facilitating corporate spying & tie-in to be less harmful. Particularly since a lot of people just didn't use the app anyway here without any concern for the ethics of it, so it's not like purposely ignoring the corposcum (instead of incidentally) would've been all that much of a problem.

As for the lack of preparedness and waiting to be against the wall, that habit annoys me profoundly.

It's not like this is our first time either, we know better.

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight @Seirdy Our governments all saw what SARS did before, and the polio, influenza and tuberculosis pandemics before that.

There is absolutely no excuse for not having mandated better HVAC filtering & sanitation before.

Fabio Manganiello Jul 2, 2023

@lispi314 @Seirdy > those with phones that require proprietary software to make that functional whom have removed that software.

In a world where DP-3T became the widely adopted solution, you wouldn't have needed Google Play Services/Apple crapware to run the service. Being an open and distributed protocol, anybody could have implemented both the server and the client. It's a problem that can be solved by construction :)

> those without functional mobile phones

Well I guess we have to find a cutoff at some point.

For a system based on Bluetooth beacons like the exposure tracking service, a smartphone is obviously needed (or a battery-powered RaspberryPi in your bag if you really want to go the geek way).

If you want to get notifications about tsunamis, earthquakes or tornadoes around you, anything based on GSM and the likes should work - even a $25 phone that only makes calls.

And you could also leverage alerts over specific AM/FM frequencies if you also want to make sure that other radio devices can pick them.

If you don't own any form of phones nor radio devices, I guess that the last resort would be wailing loudspeakers all around the city if something is going very wrong - and in the Netherlands we actually have those too.

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight @Seirdy > If you want to get notifications about tsunamis, earthquakes or tornadoes around you, anything based on GSM and the likes would work - even a $25 phone that only makes calls.

Why should I have to get a GSM dongle for my desktop when it has a perfectly fine ethernet connection and I have a dbus-connected notification message daemon active?

One doesn't need to be out & about to know it's a good idea to pack one's shit & leave as fast as possible or shelter in place.

LisPi Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight @Seirdy It'd be a lot more complicated and expensive to acquire SDR or generic packet radio equipment to attach to it than just poll an RSS endpoint periodically.

As for conventional AM/FM, the air tends to be filled with junk instead of just silent between alerts.

Fabio Manganiello Jul 2, 2023

@lispi314 @Seirdy > It'd be a lot more complicated and expensive to acquire SDR or generic packet radio equipment to attach to it than just poll an RSS endpoint periodically.

You're assuming that your only receiving device will be a desktop/laptop connected to a network, which is not the case for most of the folks.

Things aren't mutually exclusive. I would assume that any serious broadcast alert system should have an RSS feed (that should be literally the step zero for any public notification-based communication that others can build automation upon), and ideally support an open protocol for notification delivery like UnifiedPush, so thousands/millions won't have to poll the same URL all the time.

But, again, designing these things isn't like designing a DIY project. The first thought should be about the use-case that >99% of the population is most likely to use.

David Holt Jul 2, 2023

@blacklight “Can you imagine a tsunami alert system in Japan that alerts only those who paid for a platinum alert subscription, and only if they haven't already consumed their budget of 5 yearly alerts?” No, but then suddenly, yes :(

Melonie Jul 3, 2023

@blacklight Exactly this, I've been wondering about this for a while - what the implications of a Twitter meltdown would be for institutional accounts that have over time come to treat Twitter as a stable means of sharing important and correct info quickly - including government accounts, also politicians' accounts (just to name a couple that I'm familiar with). It just seemed like a disaster in the making!

Neal Onions Jul 3, 2023

Here in the Philippines it is a somewhat similar story except that the devil here is Meta not Twitter. Kids in elementary school need FB messenger to stay in touch with school, that’s right; even though they are too young to have a FB account, who cares about pupil welfare? Oh and Google gets a slice of the cake too, most learning materials are through You Tube complete with endless fast food advertising.

Our local council communicates through FB, not even any active web site. The story is similar for many businesses.

Thankfully volcano, earthquake and typhoon warnings do come direct through mobile phone telcos though.

@blacklight We cannot rely on private companies to do what is in the public good. We cannot expect public institutions to utilize a private service to disseminate information to all. Hopefully what comes out of this is a standard that can be used by anyone to disseminate information quickly, easily, and in an accessible way.

Giuseppe Bilotta Jul 9, 2023

@blacklight FWIW I've started pushing a bit harder on the idea of the Fediverse among my colleagues, but getting the occasion to push the idea up the “command chain” isn't trivial.

Fabio Manganiello Jul 9, 2023

@giuseppebilotta every little push counts :)