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0 pointsreaperducer2y ago0 comments

An emergency broadcast that reaches nobody is just as useful as a tweet that doesn't go out.

Except that emergency broadcasts (at least where I live) interrupt all television signals, all radio stations, all cable TV channels, all cell phones (unless you've intentionally disabled them), and one place I lived they even appeared on satellite TV channels. They even go out on satellite radio in North America. Then, if things get really bad, klaxons blare.

Comparing emergency broadcasts to social media doesn't make sense.

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taeric2y ago

Interrupting all signals that are in use by commercial companies, is still ultimately relying on commercial infrastructure, though?

Yes, signal usage is a bit easier to jump on top of as the government regulates those uses of signals. There really isn't a way to do that on the internet. Best they can have is to regulate that Twitter has to give them unlimited limits in emergency cases. Which, yes, they should do.

This will annoy a ton of "free market" folks, as it will almost certainly make it harder to enter the market as a competitor. Will look a lot like regulatory capture, all told.

MichaelZuo2y ago

> Interrupting all signals that are in use by commercial companies, is still ultimately relying on commercial infrastructure, though?

No, government owned cell towers, military owned cell towers, etc., also send out the signal, so even if every commercially owned cell tower suddenly vanished most cities will still be covered by enough signal strength for a few hundred bytes of text.

shkkmo2y ago

> Comparing emergency broadcasts to social media doesn't make sense.

The comment you are responding to is not doing that.

The point was that there is little value is using a niche social media platform for emergency broadcasts because so few people use it.

Sure, once you have the bigger platforms covered, there's no harm in adding smaller ones, but people calling to ditch twitter and use mastodon or some other service are being silly.

jakelazaroff2y ago

Why ditch one? Just post to both.

alexandre_m2y ago

Exactly.

You should publish to multiple platforms if the message is deemed important. Nothing wrong with duplicating messages across private and public infrastructure websites.

slashdev2y ago

Emergency broadcast isn’t quite the word. Canada also has a similar emergency broadcast mechanism.

This is more like updates on an ongoing situation. Social media is a reasonable way to deliver that.

altdataseller2y ago

Where do the klaxons blare from? And who decides to blare the klaxons?

taylodl2y ago

Here in tornado country we have sirens that are used to warn of tornados. They're controlled by the county. They test them every Wednesday afternoon. You're supposed to tune in to news to find out what's going on. They're just an alert to tell you something (usually a tornado) is going on. They also were to be used in case of atomic attack.

If you hear the siren you're supposed to seek shelter and then tune in to find out what's going on. This is an effective way for dealing with any emergency, even outside of tornados.

yurishimo2y ago

In the Netherlands, emergency sirens are tested at Noon on the first monday of every month for 1 minute. If you hear a siren at any other time, it's serious and you seek out more information from sources relevant to your area.

dmoy2y ago

> Where do the klaxons blare from?

Everywhere in a city, and more scattered the farther you go out.

If you ever lived in the Midwest, it's the same things that do the monthly-or-whatever tornado alert tests (and real tornado alerts).

> And who decides to blare the klaxons?

Depends on the situation. But it's not nationally controlled, so it depends on where you live. City or county or whatever

tivert2y ago

> Depends on the situation. But it's not nationally controlled, so it depends on where you live. City or county or whatever

It's definitely city-level, in at least some places. I know because I was visiting a friend and heard the sirens go off. I assumed it was a tornado warning (i.e. actually serious), but it turns out that city (and only that city in the area) is dumb and blare the sirens for severe thunderstorm warnings, basically crying wolf every time.

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seszett2y ago

I suspect this depends on the country.

Here it's mostly fire departments and town halls that have the sirens, and they are controlled by the town hall, département (one level above) and the interior ministry, so each of these level can decide to blare the sirens it is responsible for.

It basically never happens except in real bad circumstances.

Actually I said "here" but I don't live in France most of the time, and here in Belgium it's only based on the phone network now, no sirens anymore.

irrational2y ago

I’ve never lived in a tornado area, but my understanding is they do have these as a tornado warning device in those areas.

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