The data secure officer of our goverment has build a mastodon server and some official post there. I think more countries should do that. So they don't have to rely on something like Twitter or Facebook. They could do that to reach more people, but with a mastodon instace they could be independent from companies

No one wants to download a government announcement app or go out of their way to check a government website. Twitter worked so well because people already had accounts, it was a widespread platform, and really helped maximize visibility. I don't really blame officials for putting a lot of announcements on Twitter. It was either that or force some kind of app/system alert to get the word out. Yes, right now cell phones get amber alerts and weather warnings, but could you imagine the uproar if every bill vote, every infrastructure project,, every hours change for each relevant government office was beamed straight to every phone? We'd cry out against the invasion of privacy and forced participation. Or worse, if the government ran the primary Twitter-like website to maintain control. We'd call it the protest as if it was the Chinese or North Korean government right at our fingertips. It was an OK solution in my mind until this entire debacle sought to capitalize overnight on a public fuckup

But don't you know? They're private companies, you can dictate what they can do! They need to make money! Profits! Responsibility to shareholders! Fuck anything else!

Good info, just wanted to add on with instructions for both major mobile platforms. Depending on your specific device and version, there may be some slight differences in how the menu options are worded and you might need to expand a collapsed section in the menu to see the settings.

Source: Google support

Thanks for the tip, I found it in my notification history.

In my area, amber alerts are delivered via Localized Emergency Alerts, and clicking on it takes you to the Highway Patrol Twitter page.

It does come as a notification, and I ended up finding it in my notification history.

I didn't even consider the fact that the fediverse offers us the ability to start having publicly owned social media and government-run instances for direct communication.

That could be very interesting...

You should try if Nitter works.

Agencies that built around that openness: “How could our reliance on a private entity have backfired on us like this?”

Also those same agencies: “Does anyone know a free private company we can build upon now?”

"No chance of finding your child? Check out these great deals on dolls at Amazon.com."

Yeah... not happening.

It's hilarious that I tried to click that link, despite not having a Twitter account.

Nope. But one time I saw the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, and I had never seen it before. So it's possible. I end up driving 2 1/2 hours per day, so anything to make things more interesting.

They used to have the county, type of car and a license plate half the time.

Tbh I've gotten pretty conditioned to ignore them.

I definitely use nitter if I'm posting a Twitter link. But I'm probably too lazy to use it when I'm just clicking someone else's link.

Nitter seems to be broken because of those twitter changes :/

This change also blocks nitter since it relies on being able to access Twitter as a non-logged-in user. More info on their GitHub: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/919

Nitter won't work with new posts as it has started scraping from the web interface - which now requires an account.

In my state (California), the Amber Alerts contain a short URL to a tweet by the highway patrol with the details.

Twitter, just today, started forcing login to see all tweets. So it's relevant and timely.

Yeah, if you ignore the piece of technology receiving a technological message from another piece of technology which you then view on the piece of technology, I guess there is no technology involved

You might be right...I tried to search for a Twitter community, but it doesn't exist here yet apparently.