#HappyNewYear to everyone! Thanks in advance for taking care of me in the #NewYear !

祝大家新年快乐！新的一年也希望大家多多关照哦！

新年あけましておめでどう！今年も、よろしくお願いします！

This account is not set to public on notestock.

This account is not set to public on notestock.

This account is not set to public on notestock.

This account is not set to public on notestock.

This account is not set to public on notestock.

@gerowen NERV is a commercial service that simply compiles official alerts; the service itself is not official. (Of course, that doesn't mean it should be limited.)

@intelgraphy According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japan) Cell Broadcast is available. TV and radio stations also cut regular programs and broadcast relevant information.

Yesterday's #earthquake in #Japan shows a possible weak link in #DisasterRelief . On one hand, conspiracy theories and spam were quickly unleashed on X, and an unofficial account that reposts official alerts was ratelimited. On the other hand some Japanese-speaking #fediverse instances were experiencing long delays in processing posts. In particular, Fedibird had to acquire another server to eliminate such delays, intensifying their already precarious financial situation.

I think the #fediverse can play an important role here. Governments worldwide should establish their official #SocialMedia presence on the fediverse by hosting their own instances, instead of relying on commercial (and often foreign) platforms like X or Threads, as noted by @matabeee. Yes, there are government-operated instances in Europe, but those are more used for PR; their utility in #NaturalDisaster remains to be seen.

However, another concern is whether various #fediverse implementations and instances can, through technical and moderation means, handle increased traffic as a result of a #NaturalDisaster or other emergencies. To prioritize federating important information, One idea would be to temporarily enable a federation whitelist, but this may disadvantage smaller (especially single-person) instances. Approaches to resolve this remain to be discovered.

@vfrmedia Emergency alerts are the relatively lesser problem here. In Japan, there's already https://unnerv.jp that reposts official alerts (although the service is commercially-operated. Oh, also they got ratelimited on X.). The bigger problem is how to make sure unofficial but relevant information, say, one's personal safety or observations of damage, can get through more efficiently.

@vfrmedia Moderation: yes, but it matters little if the upstream (server) cannot handle it. I also think maybe a filter (be it simple keywords or some advance techniques) can be applied to local users before a post is added to the processing queue, but then bad actors could game the filter to spread disinformation which, while we hope that moderators can catch them, remains a risk. Especially, say, in a war, the real information is often absent.

@alter_kaker Sure, I guess a relay can have dedicated moderators. I suppose a lesser solution would be a group, essentially an automatically-boosting bot that people can mention, eg. https://a.gup.pe in English and https://ovo.st in Chinese.