Will Twitter’s Tweet View Limits Affect Weather Safety?

I am on Twitter. It still has some value for me, but like many users, I have migrated to a variety of platforms for other needs. For me, one of Twitter’s greatest contributions to society is its immediacy during dangerous, evolving weather hazards. Even as a meteorologist, I often go to Twitter to see how a tornadic storm is evolving in real-time or to gain information on hurricane messaging. Recently, the platform announced that it will limit the number a tweets a user can see. Will tweet view limits affect weather safety?

According to NPR, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said limits are needed to combat other companies “scraping data” from the platform. Interestingly, there does seem to be a “profit” component as well. Published reports reveal that people with verified accounts will be able to see more tweets in a day than unverified users. By the way, I used to have a “blue check,” but as it became a pay to play service, it feels less meaningful and valuable to me (but I digress).

My bigger concern is that many people receive valuable information from Twitter in rapidly evolving weather scenarios. The National Weather Service is concerned too. In a related move earlier this Spring, Twitter announced that agencies like the National Weather Service would be limited in the number of automated tweets it could send out. NOAA, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, was concerned about the limit of 50 automated tweets and rightfully so. The agency sends out numerous automated watch, warning, and instructive messages prior to and in the midst of dangerous weather.

However, various media sources report that the company backtracked on that announcement. The platform’s daily news service tweeted the notice above in April. Apparently, certain public facing agencies or government entities will retain the ability to tweet vital information without fees. Gosh, let’s hope so.

Ok, let’s assume for now that the problem is resolved with the National Weather Service and other agencies. Here is why I am still concerned from a weather perspective. Several scholarly studies affirm the value of Twitter for disseminating weather informat. Information is more immediate than other popular social media platforms because of how the algorithms determine what is seen. Tweets provide an array of value information including where the hazardous weather feature is located, how it may be evolving, and so forth. Additionaly, it provides a wealth of geolocation and assessment information for emergency response, decisionmaking, and the public good. A 2020 study by Rob Grace published in the journal Data in Brief provides a comprehensive look at what he calls “crisis social media.”

While social media is useful for weather dissemination, a 2019 study published in the journal Weather, Climate and Society found that Twitter is very popular with more weather attentive users and less so with the general public. They also found that Facebook had far greater reach among the public but that weather messaging format, time stamps, and other algorithmic tendencies were problematic on that platform. On Facebook, I used to post weather information for friends and family until I realized some might see that message in one minute, one hour, one day, or one week. The top three ways, based on first choice preferences, that survey respondents wanted watch and warning information was Phone App (24.84%), Facebook (21.02%), and Twitter (19.11%). Television was ranked 4th at just over seventeen percent. However, a 2014 study in the same journal argued that Twitter could be a valid indicator or proxy for public attenciton to severe weather.

My takeaway is that a significant number of people do use Twitter for weather information. Is it possible that limits for non-verified users could alter their decision to make the right decision in an evolving tornadic storm or locate a loved one in the aftermath of a hurricane? Sure it is, but it would likely have to be a high-volume, high traffic weather event. Keep in mind, that we get numerous non-weather related tweets in a given day. Of course, social media is only one tool and should not be a singular tool for such information. However, it certainly has been a useful tool in its more organic days.

Unfortunately, other weather entities are also haveing challenges with Twitter. WeatherSTEM is an outstanding national weather observing networks with a strong tie to K-12 and collegiate instruction. Its self-contained weather stations automatically share real-time weather information and weather-camera information in evolving weather situations. Its CEO Ed Mansouri shared some of his concerns in a web post earlier this year. While the issues may be different, I suspect they are broadly related in some ways.

Twitter has some information on its various limit policies here. As a side note, competing platform Bluesky has experienced a significant increase in traffic since limits were announced by Twitter. However, it is still in “invite” testing phase at this time.