Yokohama Accidentally Tweets That NK Missile Is Inbound

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."

Comments

Pre-written?

[ZorinLynx]

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.

Re:Pre-written?

[Bohnanza]

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

Twitter fails as warning system.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.