Elon Musk
Hamburg fire brigade criticizes new Twitter access limit
The fire brigade considers the Twitter limit ordered by Elon Musk to be extremely dangerous
© imago/USA TODAY Network
Elon Musk’s new Twitter rules thwarted the Hamburg fire department’s crisis communication yesterday evening.
During the defusing of a World War II bomb in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, the Hamburger The fire brigade not only had to deal with the acute danger of an explosion yesterday, July 5, but also with the disruption to their usual crisis communication.
Since Twitter boss Elon Musk surprisingly introduced an access limit for unverified accounts of the short message service on July 1, the Hanseatic city’s fire brigade was suddenly on the hose in the middle of the bomb operation.
The background: In order to persuade the users of the service to subscribe to a paid “verified account” with a blue tick, Musk introduced new Twitter rules of the game a few days ago. Users with verified accounts should only read a maximum of 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts only have access to a maximum of 600 posts per day, newly created unverified accounts have to be content with 300 visible posts per day. After displeasure from users, Musk announced that he wanted to adjust the corresponding limits to 8,000, 800 and 400 posts.
On the evening of the bomb disposal, this not only meant that the tweets sent by the fire department about the dangerous situation could not reach many affected Hanseatic users who had already exhausted their daily limit. Since the fire brigade’s social media managers, who use Twitter to react to possible tips and warnings from other users, soon reached their reading limit during the operation, they were suddenly no longer able to pursue their usual crisis communication.
“Are you serious now, Twitter!?”
They also addressed their dissatisfaction with this communication breakdown a juicy tweet straight to Twitter executives. Under a screenshot of the corresponding limit error message, they commented: “Are you serious now, Twitter!? We are actively defusing an air bomb in Hamburg and you write that we have reached our access limit??”
Many Twitter users joined the outrage over the allegedly highly dangerous reading limit. However, critical voices were also raised, asking how the fire brigade and other emergency services can rely on a privately run American company with an unpredictable management team for their emergency communications, instead of setting up their own communication structures for emergencies.