According to the Associated Press, the US government plans to use two of the most popular social networking sites for terror alerts. A new report shows that the Department of Homeland Security will be majorly reworking its entire system, which currently operates based on color-coded levels of threat, green being low threat and red being severe. The new system would replace this with two stages — elevated and imminent — and Facebook and Twitter would be vital in circulating such alerts.
“Some warnings will…be announced using social media outlets, but only after federal, state, and local government leaders have already been notified,” the AP says. The department also wants to reconstruct these alerts to be less vague and distributed more specifically.
Looking to Facebook and Twitter clearly shows how important these types of platforms have become. The recent events in the Middle East were aided by their use, and both sites served as communication tools for updates into an otherwise unknown situation.
The changes should be here as soon as the end of the month, but this has not quite been finalized yet.
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