People in Missouri reported encountering the same problem in July 2023, when the Missouri Highway Patrol sent out another Amber Alert push notification with a link to the X post. Local residents also talked about how they could not see the alert if they did not log into the platform. “It’s quite a change” from how the signs are used, said Missouri Highway Patrol Lt. Eric Brown, who works in the public information and education department. the go-to platform for Amber Alert push notifications. According to Brown, when X verified the law enforcement agency’s account as an official government entity, the log-in problem disappeared and the public could once again “access our posts.” Several official X California Highway Patrol accounts have something similar. badge verification as Missouri Highway Patrol, including one dedicated to disseminating active signs statewide. However, not all of the California agency’s accounts appear to have been verified, including what appears to be the official channel for the CHP’s Southern Division, which includes Los Angeles county. While known as Twitter, X is considered an important part of the global. disaster and emergency communication infrastructure. Government officials and agencies around the world rely on the service as a way to broadcast information about hurricanes, mass shootings, and other crises. Before Musk takes over the platform in 2022, anyone can see public tweets in a browser, regardless of whether they have an account on the site or have the Twitter mobile app installed. (In 2015, the company reported that more than 500 million people visit the Twitter site each month without signing in.) In June 2023, reports that X had begun locking content behind the log-in screen began to surface online. At the time, Musk called the move a “temporary emergency measure” taken because X was “requesting too much data and disrupting the service.” It’s unclear exactly what Musk meant, but in the same month he expressed concern about AI companies like OpenAI allegedly scraping Twitter posts without prior authorization. Now it seems the decision to turn X into a more closed platform. According to tests conducted this week, X continues to limit what people without an account can see. WIRED looks at some of the accounts of its staff reporter ‘X without logging in, for example, and can only see samples of popular posts instead of a full chronological feed. It appears that accounts maintained by government entities are not restricted in this way; All posts shared by the California Highway Patrol alert account can be viewed without logging in. In addition to allowing anyone to view content shared on the platform, another way Twitter previously helped emergency communicators was by providing free access to its API, which Musk later revoked. This allows organizations like the US National Tsunami Warning Center to send automatic alerts about potentially deadly natural disasters. Researchers and first responders can also use the API to monitor activity on Twitter and “extract key insights, such as identifying risk hotspots or countering misinformation,” Hughes said. “The role of the platform has changed as policy and public use has evolved, so its effectiveness may look different today.” Despite these shortcomings, X remains an important platform for transmitting information during emergencies. In October, several emergency government information officers told PRWeek that they planned to post updates about X despite the fact that they had gained a large following on the site, and that their priority was ultimately to ensure that accurate information reached as many people as possible. But an incident in California this week highlights how government agencies can run into trouble when third-party services they think are trusted later change their policies in unpredictable ways.
