Weather Syndication accounts hitting error code 326, pain unlocking accounts ensues

[RyanBretonWX]

While the users of these accounts may be “low volume”, they’re high quality. These accounts automatically tweet weather warnings, advisories and National Weather Service bulletins, the instant they are issued. As a broadcast meteorologist, I rely on these accounts to relay information on TV and online. They have become invaluable.

Twitter’s approach here is strongly misguided. It would be a shame to see this public service discontinued because of Twitter’s bureaucracy.

[AaronPerryWx]

It would be a real shame to see these valuable (and timely) weather alert bots go away. Echoing above comments, these bots truly do provide fast weather alerts and statistics - the weather community is better off because of them.

[Crist_Cacewx]

This really is a shame. I find it astonishing that twitter would say these bots are not providing information to enough people. I for one use these bots to quick snowfall reports and Local Storm reports.

[JackSillin]

These bots provide a stream of information critical to forecasters maintaining situational awareness as severe weather events unfold. Yes they tweet a lot of info, but seeing all that data is crucial in being able to keep up with complex weather events. Please find a way to let them stay operational!

[_CTWeather]

These bots are immensely important because they provide real time information. I use them to relay information on snowfall, severe weather, and alerts sent by the National Weather Service. By removing these, the ability to tell where a tree has fallen, location of an impassable road, hail size, record event, snowfall amount, etc. will be eliminated. IEM Bots are incredible important to forecasters and should not be taken down. Please allow these life-saving bots to continue

[ScottDimmich]

Twitter Staff,

I strongly recommend you unlock all of the IEMBot Twitter accounts and whitelist them. Watch, warning, advisory, and select significant weather event (tornado, severe wind gusts, funnel clouds, etc.) notifications go out through these accounts and have for years. Meteorologists depend on these notifications for both awareness and dissemination purposes. I assure you there is a large value to these tweets and are in no way, shape, or form in violation of Twitter’s best practices and terms of service.

Please do the right thing and whitelist all IEMBot Twitter accounts. Not 20 of them. All of them, please.

Scott

[BetsyKling]

Twitter Staff: Perhaps Twitter should consider asking the users of the bots how much value they have. Do you not see the number of verified accounts that follow these handles? Have you taken time to look at the content? Or perhaps see how many accounts have blocked the bots? Probably not many because this is information people (followers) seek out. We have the chance to pick and choose what bots we see in our feeds, which translates to picking/choosing what geographical areas we want to see. These aren’t ads, nor are they commercial. In the old days this is the type of information dissemination that set Twitter apart from the other social channels.

[PSUWeather]

Twitter Staff:

The Campus Weather Service would like to provide our continued support for all of these bots that provide valuable, critical, and especially timely severe weather warnings. These bots are essential to informing us and our followers of the latest severe weather information. Our students disseminate the information these bots provide to our over 6,000 followers that expect timely weather updates. Whitelisting only 20 of these bots could have significant impacts on receiving and communicating important weather information for many meteorologists and other weather organizations. Whitelisting all of these bots will ensure that weather information will continue to be relayed in a timely manner, potentially saving lives.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[not_superiority]

twitter staff:

these bots are incredibly useful to those of us that live in flood prone areas. iembot for houston has alerted me to flash floods and flooded roads faster than the news, certainly better than the weather apps available.

i strongly recommend you whitelist all the iembots for the actual valuable service they provide.

[ConcernedMet]

They already have a great strategy that provides not only excellent, but lifesaving, information to the North American weather, television, and Emergency Management communities. I can see why these accounts may appear to be spam giving twitter’s recent initiatives and mentality but I assure twitter that the current system is the one cherished by the users of these ‘bots’.

The accounts in question distribute, in real time, weather information for each National Weather Service office in the United States. Sometimes these are simple forecasts. Other times they are very time sensitive storm or tornado warnings.

There is not another system for receiving this information like this at the moment. Government websites where this information originates lack any real-time notification tools as comprehensive as this. The weather community loves Twitter for it’s time oriented feed and these boots serve as the nuts and bolts of meteorologist’s feeds. Aggregating these accounts so there are only a handful will create more spam-like content for the current userbase as users will be forced to see content from geographical areas they are not assigned to or have no interest in.

I implore Twitter to take on the burden of proof that these accounts do not add value. Simply saying the number of accounts and rate of tweets is unacceptable and a poorly thought out metric for the quality of an account. I suspect few users block this content and many rely on it to make critical decisions in bad weather. Please take a moment to reconsider your position on these accounts.

[HickmanSevereWx]

Wanting to throw in my two cents and support for the IEM Bots.

These provide a great deal of value to a tight knit weather community, and for others who rely on these real time tweets from these bots for their source of getting valuable weather information.

For my account, for instance, it is incredibly helpful to have IEMBOT_OHX running in a column during severe weather events in Middle TN, as sometimes I’m not always able to jump to other sources (like internal NWSChat), to get critical weather alerts. I’ve also even directed dozens of my followers to follow IEMBOT_OHX as a way for them to get weather alerts too.

While the Weather Twitter Community by the low in numbers, we are a very highly engaged, highly valuable group of power users when it comes to using Twitter to help gather, read, analyze, and distribute critical weather information. Even local NWS WFO offices have retweeted the IEMBOT accounts for their CWAs.

Twitter, in general and in specific to this case, could and should do more to help out communities like the weather community utilize the platform for highly valuable and often times critically important information.

@akrherz, I feel your pain about the IEMBOTs and want to let you know that I greatly appreciate the work you do to keep these bots running. They are critical for us here in Middle Tennessee that rely on the bot for OHX. Twitter’s most recent changes haven’t helped us in the weather community, and has even hurt us. I hope Twitter does the right thing here and works with you to make sure these accounts stop being locked out and work as intended.

[mattlanza]

I would second, third, and fourth the thoughts of many others here. For many in the meteorology community, this sort of service, where real time info is easy to grab directly from the source and tweet out is both useful and in some cases invaluable. I know many meteorologists who use this for their day to day work and in real-time during impactful weather events. There are some bots that make sense, and in this case, with an account that is clearly labeled as such and as one that is being used for positive purposes by communicators (not misinformation), Twitter should have no issues at all white-listing these accounts as not necessary to banish from the platform. Please listen to your users.