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Yokohama Accidentally Tweets That NK Missile Is Inbound

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-a-drill dept.

ForgedArtificer writes "Earlier today, the Crisis Management Office Affairs Bureau for the city of Yokohama, Japan had some startling news for its followers; to wit, a North Korean missile was on its way to Japan. The tweet stayed up for about 20 minutes before being removed and replaced with an apology. The city reports that a pre-written tweet was released due to a malfunction in the 'mechanism' that would have released the tweet at the appropriate time."

6 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Pre-written? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This sounds like something serious enough that a pre-written tweet is not the best idea. If a missile were inbound for my area, I'd want a real person to write the tweet, with actual pertinent details, rather than "releasing" a prewritten, generic tweet.

    Something that can cause panic like this should not be automated.

    1. Re:Pre-written? by HaZardman27 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Seriously, how long would it take in the event of an actual launch detection to write a tweet? Doesn't seem like this "mechanism" is nearly worth the risk.

      --
      Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
    2. Re:Pre-written? by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Given the proximity of North and South, ahem, Korea. Me thinks you don't get much lead time...

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    3. Re: Pre-written? by sir_eccles · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually well run corporate social media often implement an approval process for all tweets replies and other comments to avoid spelling mistakes misinterpretation and ensuring that the right corporate message gets across. I'm sure that a committee sat down here and said "what is the best way to write this?" Rather than let some 20 something quickly write something in the spur of the moment that might be wrong. So yes prewritten is probably a good idea, accidentally pressing send however...

    4. Re:Pre-written? by Bohnanza · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds like something serious enough to use an air-raid siren instead of a tweet.

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      Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.

  2. Twitter fails as warning system. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good test. No widespread panic. Nobody changing their behaviour. No flood of retweets. Thanks to this production test we learned that twitter is not a good warning system.