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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Can the Canadian government please just have an official platform for sharing this kind of information? Why are evacuation notices going on Facebook???
They do have these platforms, but many people have become dependent on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to link to information.
So the territorial government is literally posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter telling people how to search for CPAC Canada and CBC Radio so they can find the sites.
Compare that to the duty of all broadcasters in a public emergency to carry the key evacuation information on radio and television and tell people where to get more detailed emergency instructions.
@StillPaisleyCat @ImplyingImplications
It's not a dependence in an addictive way. It's in a community way, where all news is shared on community pages for the benefit of the community because they rely on each other for survival every day.
Agreed. But this is a societal dependence.
Too many clubs, churches and communities organizations, and small businesses found Facebook easier to maintain than websites, so many people became dependent on that platform.
The challenge is that governments have a duty to meet their constituents where they are, especially in emergencies. So they send out Tweets, ‘grams and posts directing people to the information on official sites.
Before the Internet, people would turn on their radios or televisions. That’s why in most jurisdictions (including the United States) broadcasters and cable carriers MUST carry emergency broadcasts, superceding regular programming. The wave of climate-related emergencies raise the question of whether internet aggregator platforms should be required to do the same.
As an aside, governments and public new sources maintain websites that are accessible. Due to a Canadian Supreme Court decision requiring government platforms to be accessible to persons with disabilities, Canadian new sites have user interfaces that are adaptive.
@StillPaisleyCat
Remote communities in northern Canada operate differently than everything along the 49th parallel.
Stop using a wide brush to describe two completely different societies.
We can agree on remote communities having different circumstances, and social networks.
That said, I doubt that this would apply any less in the Okanagan communities where there are many people living on backroads and off the grid or in most of Canada outside the major metropolitan areas.
@StillPaisleyCat
Not really. I've lived in Kelowna and also in remote Ontario regions. The only similarity is that there's lots of trees.
Kelowna is a significant regional metropolitan area.
But get into the bush beyond Vernon or up to William’s Lake and you will find that people who used to rely heavily on CBC and other AM radio in a crisis are looking to their regular internet sources. If that’s where they get their information, then that’s where government’s need to make sure it’s available in an emergency.
@StillPaisleyCat
There are cell towers in those regions vs few/none in northern regions.
That's the difference.
Cell towers work in some but not all the smaller hamlets.
This doesn’t seem to the point however. Meta and X not carrying links isn’t a barrier for those who have no Internet access whatsoever. Whether north of 60 or not, a very significant portion of the population has become reliant on Meta and X to feed them news to the point that they don’t know where to get reliable evacuation guidance in an emergency.
As an aside, resilient emergency communications to the public a reason that the CBC will be maintaining AM radio stations that broadcast curve of the Earth. The public needs to know where to find that and have AM radios to access it however.
Thing is, if there is an emergency, you are not going to force the user to follow a link. You are going to put the details they need to know right there. Something Meta and X are quite happy to allow.
There is good reason the payload the emergency alert system those cell towers carry isn't a link to a CBC article. That would be silly and would be equally silly if done on Facebook/Instagram/X/whatever.
The framing of this as a linking issue is hilarious and nonsensical.
Nonsense. If you put the details that everyone needs to know in one message, and then update it as things change you'll just run into issues where various apps will consider it old news and drop it off.
It also relies on people to constantly check this one post for updates rather than having the updates pushed to them.
Linking allows them to have a resource that is constantly being updated while also being able to push it, and get it into people's feeds.
Normally if things change you post a new message. That is how the cell network alert system functions. I repeat, they do not send you a link to a web page with the information you need to know, and there is no doubt good reason for that.
If you think the cell network alert system is fundamentally flawed, that is our top priority as it is how the vast majority of people using apps are going to receive the alerts. The call to improve alerts on Meta/X is way down the list to catch a smaller group of people who missed the cell network alerts. It is critical to reach the widest audience first.
But, again, the right way to get emergency information in front of people is to get it in front of them immediately, not make them navigate through layers upon layers to find the information. Once you get to fixing Meta/X, you are going to have them improve displaying the alerts in their own interface where the people already are. Forcing people to navigate to see an emergency alert will never be relevant. That is just plain bad UX.
And the problem is that they haven't figured out how to hack into RSS feeds the same way?
Maybe getting the word out via Facebook, Instagram, and X is good enough? Outside of Podcasts, RSS is considered dead anyway. There are diminishing returns to consider.
The whole point in an emergency is to get the official guidance out to where people look first for information, not retrain them to go to official sites.
What you are suggesting is that Facebook and Twitter be legally required to push official emergency information from governments to the top. That would parallel what the broadcasters and cable carriers typically have to do. It makes sense, but given that they don’t seem to want to be obligated to carry government information except as paid advertising, this would require a new emergency system for internet platforms.