The turmoil at Twitter is forcing emergency managers to pay attention, as the platform has long been a preferred method by which they can rapidly distribute critical information to those at risk from a natural disaster, or receive reliable information from trusted sources, like the National Weather Service, according to an article in Scientific American. With the changes to the blue checkmark system, however, many of those reliable sources are now subject to spoofing, in a manner that can cause confusion or allow for someone to distribute deliberately misleading information.
Says Samantha Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, of the importance of Twitter, to “We have redundancy in how we send warnings to the public and where we post information. But Twitter is uniquely situated to help information spread quickly.”
It’s that ability to help information spread quickly that concerns many emergency managers. Says Kate Hutton, an emergency manager in Seattle, about the risk of fake accounts, “It’s going to cost people time, which ultimately costs them lives and injury and property during an emergency.”
Concerns also exist about the potential for Twitter to fail, as the recent layoffs have led to some critical technical teams within the organization to be decimated. Says Montano, “Depending on what direction Twitter goes here, there is potential for some huge gaps in how emergency management unfolds.”
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