Amsterdam-Amstelland Fire Brigade Halts Twitter Updates Due to Policy Change

The Amsterdam-Amstelland fire brigade no longer distributes updates about the storm that is moving across the Netherlands via Twitter. The force did, but the information turned out to be unreadable for many people because Twitter has changed its policy.

The corps referred to the Twitter account in an NL-Alert that the government sent to people in Amsterdam just before nine o’clock. The rest of North Holland and parts of Flevoland received an NL-Alert that had no call to follow a fire brigade’s Twitter account. The message there was simply that people should stay indoors.

Spokesman Thijs Nieuwenhuizen tells Tweakers that the fire brigade was not aware of the change to Twitter, which means that users who are not logged in can no longer see tweets. “We don’t check every day whether everyone can still read our tweets,” says Nieuwenhuizen. Updates now come via a live blog of the municipality of Amsterdam on the municipality’s website which is publicly available.

Bits of Freedom, among others, has already paid attention to the case. “In case of emergency you should not have to create a Twitter account, we think”, said the organization. Nieuwenhuizen cannot yet say whether the Amsterdam fire brigade will no longer use Twitter for updates from now on. “We will see that later, we have our hands full with the storm today.”

2023-07-05 08:29:45


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