As misinformation proliferated on X thanks to verified users, a massive account sharing accurate information hit its Musk-imposed posting limit.
Twitter did eventually get its shit together and lift the API limits on NERV’s accounts, but people on JP Twitter were furious, and “Elon” in Japanese (イーロン) was trending, with people basically cussing him out for effing up Twitter by limiting NERV and getting rid of the chronological timeline. Folks were also upset at all the “reply zombies” (blue check bot accounts) commenting complete garbage like “nice” and “happy new year” in posts about the earthquake.
As for misinformation, the evening of the quake “人工地震” (manmade earthquake) was trending on Twitter, and NHK news yesterday actually had a segment on last night explaining that no, the quake was not manmade, and that misinformation was being spread on Twitter.
So how have Twitter fucked up here then? NERV isn’t a government body, it isn’t an official public safety channel, it’s a private not for profit organisation. The official government ones already have no limits, it’s just everyone in Japan uses NERV because they’re so damned good.
Now, I don’t agree with API charges (much like data charges for internet, they aren’t proportionate to cost) but setting that aside, NERV didn’t automatically deserve the exemption and never even tried to get it.
Musk has still made a shit system, but it’s not shit because of this event.
Lol how do you figure my comment is defending Musk against criticism? I literally said his version of the website is shit.
The point I’m making is that the criticism isn’t really valid here. NERV are not an official public safety channel.
People are making out like it’s the same as Verizon and the California firefighters when dealing with wildfires, but the difference is that firefighters are an official body.
Musk is shit, charging for API is shitty in general, but you can’t claim “they’re inhibiting public safety information!” when strictly speaking NERV is more like an overgrown Facebook group (although, that cannot diminish how awesome they are).
charging for API is shitty in general
Kid named Steve Huffman
Aka Musk fanboi
Steve Huffman did it first
Did he? I thought Twitter started API charges first.
This article says Musk announced it in February last year: https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-data-api-prices-out-nearly-everyone/
Maybe if he hadn’t fired 85% of his employees, there might have been someone who checked alerting accountsand made sure no api limits applied, but nope. Dude fired so many people the simple, basic shit isn’t getting done.
Too bad they don’t just open their own instance and post there, unlimited. It was always a bad idea to put public safety information channels in private hands.
They have their own Mastodon instance and have since 2017. They also have an app. They were telling people to get the app once they realized they were being API limited.
But people in Japan have trusted Twitter for emergency info since the big Tohoku earthquake and still go there for information. Elon wrecked that trust.
Its maddening how hard it is to get people to move socials. Maybe this will be the People’s wake up call. It really illustrates the point that most people just want to be where everyone else is.
I’d be laughing if I wasn’t horrified.
