Facebook denies intentionally blocking searches for Cyclone Alfred
www.abc.net.au
Despite hundreds of thousands of accounts talking about Cyclone Alfred on Facebook, social media giant Meta was blocking or hiding search results about the impending storm before being contacted by ABC NEWS Verify.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19124166

Social media giant Meta blocked or hid Facebook search results for “Cyclone Alfred” ahead of the tropical storm bearing down on Australia’s east coast.

The platform is a key communication channel for emergency coverage in Australia and is used to help broadcast evacuation orders and other updates to residents during a crisis.

Tropical Cyclone Alfred is expected to make landfall between the Gold Coast and southern parts of Wide Bay region as early as Thursday evening as a category two cyclone.

It is forecast to bring destructive winds and the risk of life-threatening flooding.

But general searches about cyclones or “TC Alfred” did produce information and articles in the search results, indicating some kind of throttling about the term Cyclone Alfred specifically.

[…]

The Queensland government has urged the community to visit its disaster monitoring website for the most up-to-date information.

  • sqgl@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    11 hours ago

    Why trust anything other than BOM or ABC for something like this?

    • Salvo@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      Because the ABC and BOM have experts who are also enthusiasts.

      As much fun it is to criticise the BOM when it is 34 degrees and rainy when they said it would be 33 and sunny, they are still the most accurate source of weather information.

      The ABC (and independent public radio/TV) only interest is (should be) serving their communities. The ABC does have to satisfy their political and corporate overlords (look at what Arnold Frollows did to JJJ) but is a more reliable source of reality-based news and information.

      When the ABC (and RRR/PBS/MBS/etc) stuff up and get to “corporate”, they loose supporters. Think of what happened when Sportsgirl tried to become a RRR sponsor…

  • shirro@aussie.zoneEnglish
    5·
    16 hours ago

    Never been in a tropical storm but I have been forced to leave areas ahead of bushfire fronts and to travel close to fire effected areas. I dread the day some extremist nutcase defunds ABC Radio. You can’t always rely on phone reception. A lot of old tech is better. Less distracting. More reliable.

    • BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      10 hours ago

      I urge people to keep a handheld radio on their shelf with a couple of good batteries in it. Just a speaker and an analogue tuner.

      • Fuse@infosec.exchange
        2·
        5 hours ago

        @BlueSquid0741
        Better to keep the batteries ‘out’ of the radio, but stored ‘with’ the radio.

        If fitted to even a simple device like a torch, pretty much any battery can leak.

        If the radio’s battery terminals become corroded from a leaking battery…
        …well, it’s not good.

        (Please don’t ask me how I know this…)

        @shirro

  • Salvo@aussie.zoneEnglish
    8·
    24 hours ago

    I love to bash Meta, but this is purely a problem for two reasons;

    A) /a certain demographic/ only get their News from one source. This is the same problem regardless of where you get your News from.

    B) News feeds and filtering is automated. There are no human editors; it is all algorithmic. Simple user-defined algorithms are OK, but the more they get modified by Fake Understanding, the less useful they become.