Earlier this week, the federal government department Canadian Digital Service announced it was leaving X (formerly Twitter), telling us how the platform doesn’t align with its values.
Now, it appears another federal government-run account on X is also leaving. Earthquakes Canada (@CANADAquakes) is an automated account that sends out information when an earthquake is detected, noting it magnitude, date and location. It’s a critical account with over 112,000 followers that informs many people about earthquakes.
For those that live on the west coast such as in B.C., the account lets people know about a possible tsunami along the ‘Ring of Fire’, where about 90% of all earthquakes occur.
Last week, Earthquakes Canada announced on X, “As of January 13, 2024, this account will no longer be updated.” The sudden news resulted in numerous replies asking why the account was ditching X.
As of January 13, 2024, this account will no longer be updated.
For earthquake updates, you can visit our website: https://t.co/fV1Hg38lp1
— Earthquakes Canada (@CANADAquakes) December 13, 2023
Earthquakes Canada responded yesterday, and told CityNews in a statement, “The functionality of many third-party social media platforms has changed and are no longer meeting the intended objectives of accounts. For example, some platforms no longer display posts in chronological order, which can create confusion to Canadians for time-based notification systems like earthquake alerts.”
The statement doesn’t really make sense as with push notifications on X, you can get these Earthquakes Canada posts right away, regardless of the timeline. Instead, followers are being told to visit the Earthquakes Canada website to get updates and also from its RSS feed (in 2023?!).
As of today, many replying to Earthquakes Canada’s recent notifications are still asking why the account is closing, when it is providing critical information in real-time.
There are 389 federal government accounts on X. Which one will be leaving next?
Update Dec. 20, 3pm PT: Natural Resources Canada sent iPhone in Canada the following statement as to why they are leaving X:
As of January 2024, NRCan will stop issuing earthquake notifications on third-party platforms such as Twitter/X.
The functionality of many 3rd-party social media platforms has changed and are no longer meeting the intended objectives of accounts. For example, some platforms no longer display posts in chronological order, which can create confusion to Canadians for time-based notification systems like earthquake and space weather alerts.
As part of the department’s mandate to keep Canadians safe from threats posed by natural hazards, NRCan communicates instances of earthquakes and space weather at natural-resources.canada.ca and through RSS feeds. Our officials are in the process of making adjustments to NRCan’s RSS feed.
As the digital landscape is evolving, NRCan continuously monitors and evaluates how the department engages on all social media platforms to maximize the reach and effectiveness of communications to Canadians.
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Go everyone shoud!
These aholes accused Facebook of endangering Canadian lives by blocking news sharing, even thought they weren’t blocking emergency news and Facebook was standing up to extortion.
But, for purely politics, the Trudeau gov is willing to actually put lives at risk by not posting emergency info? All for political points?
Lovely.
If only they had a website they could put information on or some sort of method of issuing an emergency broadcast. /s
I would imagine this decision was made wholly by
Earthquakes Canada. Not for reasons of Canadian politics but probably more likely because Xitter is on a steep downwards spiral of controversy, hate and mismanagement. Companies and bureaucracies are shying away from it in increasing numbers.
I use the RSS feed and the website.
So, for the sake of avoid such a “controversial” site, better to just let people die?
It’s beyond hypocritical for the Trudeau gov to claim one company was endangering Canadians access to emergency alerts (this was also 100% fiction) while being ok with their own departments do exactly that out of spite and political disagreement.
Dystopian at best to decide who lives and dies based on whether or not they use a platform out of favour with your political compatriots.
“Letting people die” because they are not posting information on one place but posting it on another? Not nitpicking but a bit hyperbolic, don’t you think?
If you had a method to alert people to imminent danger, possibly the best option for at least a few, and you decided not to use it, yeah, you’re deciding to just let them die.
Given it’s free, easy, widely used and effective, you’re not making that decision on technological grounds. You’ve decided political views outweigh your responsibility for their safety.
That’s not hyperbole.
How would you phrase it? “They’re knuckle dragging, deplorable X users that must be white supremacists, so they don’t deserve a warning”?
I wouldn’t phrase it any way at all, certainly not in that form of utter nonsense like in your last sentence. I thought you were above falsifying someone’s position in order to prove them wrong.
It was a question.
How then would you phrase their decision not to notify via Twitter for non-technical reasons?
Clearly, you seem to be a poor judge of character.
It seems like you’re suggesting this was a political choice because someone in the liberal party doesn’t like Elon. If my assessment is accurate, then I think you need to learn a bit more about how our government actually works on a day-to-day basis. First of all, a government takes political actions and operational actions. For example, choosing to create a program like the CERB that was put into place during the pandemic was a political policy action. But then the management of the program involves many hundreds of daily operational actions. Political people don’t make operational decisions and operational people are mandated to work in a non-partisan manner. In fact, there is a very strong firewall in place between the partisan political folks (MPs, Ministers, their staff) and the operational folks who work for a government department or agency (Analysts, Program Officers, Managers, Directors, etc.). Our system of government is designed such that the Minister and their partisan political staffers (Policy, Comms, Legislative Affairs, etc) set a general policy direction for the department/agency and then the explicitly non-partisan, professional public servants who typically have long careers in the public service (thus will work for governments of varying political stripes over the course of their careers) determine how to best operationalize those policy directions into day-to-day tasks to accomplish the stated policy objective(s). A very operational change like this would never have made it to the partisan political folks. Way too far into the weeds. It’s honestly surprising how most Canadians don’t even know how our government functions, but once you do, you realize how little the machinations of the politicos in Parliament affect the day to day operation of our government programs. That’s a good thing because it ensures that we have some consistency and skill in the execution of our government. I encourage you, and all Canadians, to learn more about how our government actually functions.
First, it’s not like Trudeau hasn’t been implicated repeatedly for breaking any separation/segregation. SNC, WE, NS mass shooting. Assuming there isn’t political meddling is naive. Signaling from the politicos is more than enough for decisions to be made at the bureaucratic level anyway.
Second, I’m not saying Trudeau necessarily directed these decisions personally. However, he/his ministers made a big deal about to pushy an overt fiction that Facebook was endangering Canadians with their decision, but are silent when their own departments are doing similar but worse. That’s hypocrisy.
Thing is, the situations you cited were actually political situations. For example, have you ever stopped to consider why our system has the AG as a minister of the crown? Well, the reason for having an AG who is also a minister of the crown is because the designers of our system of government realized that certain decisions of the federal prosecution service needed to be filtered thru a political lens. They would have political and economic impacts that were unintended and were not within the mandate of a crown prosecutor to consider in their work. The crown prosecutor is there to prosecute and win their case, not to think about the broader impacts of their actions on the economy and the country. But those broader impacts are within the mandate of a minister of the crown and ultimately the PM to consider. Thus, it is by design that the system of the crown prosecution service should have some political influence involved. Did you know that? I’ll admit that I didn’t until I did some research after that incident. So yes, where there are situations where the system was designed to have political influence, of course it does have that influence. And every previous government has taken advantage of those opportunities to influence the outcomes. Go back and look at the actual history and you’ll realize that the Harper, Chrétien, and Mulroney governments also exerted political influence when it served their objectives, and when it was allowed by the design of our system. Heck some of them even did it at times when it was not within the design of our system, (e.g. gagging of diplomats by the Harper gov’t).
But going back to your original issue about the removal of X as a distribution venue for NRCan info and how your suggested that this was evidence of undue influence by the Trudeau gov’t, it’s important to remember that theory based on feelings and opinions is not the same as facts based on evidence and experience. Present the facts. Otherwise you’re just making baseless accusations and that is not a helpful action in the current political and global climate.
More broadly, I suggest you go out and engage in some honest, open conversations with real, long-term federal civil servants. I suspect you’ll hear that this government isn’t nearly as meddlesome as the Harper government was. At least that is what my personal experience has been.
“ …it’s important to remember that theory based on feelings and opinions is not the same as facts based on evidence and experience. Present the facts. Otherwise you’re just making baseless accusations… ”
I would dare to guess that this is all Greek to some people. They hear what they want to hear and don’t hear what they don’t like to hear. It’s just like what Santa’s Little Helper hears when the members of his Simpsons family talk to him. People are entrenched in their biases and use all their intellectual capacity to remain entrenched.
Yes I think your analysis of what is happening here is correct. But I also think we still have to try to encourage better use of peoples’ intellectual capacity, otherwise we are tacitly accepting the continued polarization of our communities.
“…doesn’t align with its values’ of providing timely life-saving information I guess.
Just another manifestation of the woke authoritarianism that has leaked into the brains of this generation…”agree or literally just go away and die”.
but I don’t have Google Reader
absolute clownz