A growing number of prefectures have stopped posting disaster warnings on the platform due to limits on the number of free posts allowed.
I never understood why official goverment body’s do that anyway. Maintaining your own infra means you have full control. This should be mandatory for any government body. Not beeing dependant on big tech who make up silly rules as they please.
Thing is, it made sense until Twitter got sold to a capricious billionaire. Twitter was very stable and their rules didn’t change much before then. The APIs made them an easy way to send out a lot of info in a popular, easily to access way. It worked well as a system for both government agencies and citizens, until Elon decided to stick his dick in it.
How often do you browse government sites?
It’s easier to bring the information to the people than it is to bring the people to the information. Social Media is (has previously been…) perfect for that.
It sounded weird that they’d have reached the 1500 monthly tweet limit so quickly, but apparently there’s also a limit of 50 tweets per 24-hour period. In one prefecture that they use as an example, there are 45 cities, towns and villages, and each one needs it’s own specific warning. So if a big storm comes through, they’d use up all their daily tweets on the first warning, and there’d be no room for updates. So that’s what the issue was.
Did they choose an alternative?
They are now relying more on other communication methods such as email, the Line messaging app, their official website, and the L-Alert system, which shares information to media outlets who broadcast it to citizens.
