undefined | Better HN

0 pointsintrasight2y ago0 comments

Why would such a twitter variant need moderation? We're talking about a government notification system. Only people posting would be government officials.

0 comments

johaugum2y ago

> We're talking about a government notification system.

This exists, and is called Wireless Emergency Alerts. Every phone sold in the U.S. today supports this out of the box.

mholm2y ago

Wireless Emergency Alerts are for emergencies. If you look at any government's twitter feed, the posts are either very much not emergencies, or in this post's context, too specific and numerous to use the system with. The government needs something besides a passive website and a highly active emergency alert system.

wizofaus2y ago

So use the alerts to instruct users to view a website or similar platform where more detail can be posted? Unless it really is an emergency, why's there a need to push so many messages to a social media feed anyway? What are they mostly about and who reads them? During Covid there was certainly at least something interesting to post fairly regularly, though nothing that wasn't already plastered all over newspaper headlines or regular TV/radio news bulletins. Even then I can't say I ever felt an additional platform was needed, and that really was an exceptional period in history.

Chabsff2y ago

A pure one-way notification system is not a "twitter variant", but a completely different beast altogether.

The draw of the twitter-like approach is that the government messages are a portion of an existing stream of communication that people are already using/consuming.

intrasightOP2y ago

The article is about governments using twitter to send notifications. Lots - perhaps most - use twitter exclusively this way.

viraptor2y ago

If you're saying Twitter variant, that implies a social network using text+image communication. If you want a notification system instead, there are much better and usable ways to implement that. See https://www.emergency.vic.gov.au/respond/ for example.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse