> It's because X is chosen (wrongfully) as the main communications channel of all kinds of important public institutions and people (police departments, city administrations, politicians, etc.).
What's really crazy about all this is that it isn't even necessary. I get emergency alerts from my county for things like severe weather warnings, mosquito spraying, etc. You know how I get them? Text messages and email. And you know how I find out more if I want to? I go to their website.
Text message alerts and a website require some level of technical know-how from someone at the company. For many people and the companies or organizations they lead, “everyone uses X/Twitter” and/or “everyone can access X/Twitter”.
We got to this state because, when it was called Twitter, it positioned itself in the market as, exactly this. It’s only now, when there’s been some major changes to it, that we’re paying the piper.
> Text message alerts and a website require some level of technical know-how from someone at the company.
Note that I was talking about my county's government, not a company. My sense is that whatever level of technical competence county governments have is pretty much the floor on technical competence. If they can do it, any company that can't doesn't deserve to be a company anyway.
I said organization on purpose to also include governments, especially local and small ones in the middle of nowhere.