DriveBC’s Twitter account maxed out sharing crucial road condition information during a weekend of wildfire evacuations. Experts say it spells the end of social media as a reliable platform during an emergency.
A B.C. government Twitter account updating residents about driving conditions reached its tweet limit on a weekend it was sharing information about wildfire evacuations.
The incident, which occurred earlier this month, prompted the Ministry of Transportation’s DriveBC account to issue a warning.
“HEADS UP – As many others have this weekend, @DriveBC on Twitter and its sub accounts have exceeded the temporarily imposed post rate limit,” tweeted the ministry account July 2.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue going forward.”
The outage, first reported by CBC News, lasted little more than an hour but nevertheless has worried emergency preparedness experts, who say it’s the latest sign that the once-reliable platform can no longer be counted on.
“It’s kind of the end of public alerting through social media,” said Ryan Reynolds, an emergency preparedness consultant with Resilience Mapping Canada.
“These limits basically mean that we can’t distribute that information quickly and easily at any scale.”
DriveBC has a dedicated website, but many access its automated messages through its Twitter account, a platform accessed by more than a quarter of Canadians in 2023, according to the company’s advertising data.
In the past, Twitter’s more than 370 million users have accessed the platform as a last bastion of critical information during social upheavals and disaster. It played a crucial role redirecting Pakistanis to a Red Crescent emergency help line during massive floods in 2022, and amplified emergency service information when Hurricane Ian struck Florida last September.
Since Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, however, Twitter has put new rules in place that limit the number of automated tweets an account can send without paying. The move was carried out partly as a response to rising concerns artificial intelligence platforms would use the historical archives of social media platforms to train their large language models.
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