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A social media platform tailors the posts you see according to the algorithms to maximise engagement. A Web browser simply shows you the web page. Therefore, if a TOC wanted to make sure a DO NOT TRAVEL message was visible on Social Media, they would be relying on that post being picked up by the Algorithms or moderators and pushed to people who used their services (who may not have had previous engagement with them, e.g. if they are visiting an area). whereas www.TOC.co.uk would have 'DO NOT TRAVEL' front and centre of the home landing page.
Social media is a great tool to reach lots of people quickly but requires careful management and application. TOCs should always be pointing advice given on Social media back to their official websites (and National Rail Enquiries), and those pages should be being updated first. A particular problem is that when disruption starts, people will quickly start tagging various hashtags and accounts many of which are either wrong or irrelevant and it's hard to get the focus back to what is actually happening ('a lie will get halfway around the world before the truth has put it's boots on' and all that), not to mention the parody accounts on social media that can be incredibly unhelpful while trying to inject a note of comedy, when people mistake them for actual customer service accounts.
Because many ordinary people aren't preoccupied with such matters. One could equally argue that Twitter's previous owners actively sought to manipulate public opinion by the kind of tweets they did or did not allow to be posted, and how thry banned certain people. I'm not sure where such arguments take us.
Well i was replying to someone who said TOCs wouldn't be on bluesky because it was seen as left-wing (not sure why, i don't think it is personally) and thus political, so why stay on Twitter then?
Anyway also found WMR on bluesky, unfortunately hard to tell if its a real one or just a joker.
I think it makes a difference which way the communication is going, and the urgency of it.
I'm very old fashioned, but during disruption I would just like to see a single source of the truth coming from 'the railway' to me- ideally from information at stations themselves (including unstaffed ones) but elsewhere from my 'phone on the National Rail web page. What trains are running, where they are calling (including special stop orders etc) and a best endeavors view of when things are expected to be re-opened etc. Some high level reason of the disruption is helpful for context. 99% of answers to the questions people want to know should be obvious from a single screen without needing to proactively ask questions back to an individual operator either in person at a staffed station or to an on-line operator via any communication channel. Depends on the journey, but on shared routes or for connections, TOC A doesn't know what or care what TOC B is doing, but passengers just want to get to where they want to go and don't even know which TOC to contact anyway.
Outside disruption, when I want to contact 'the railway' to establish where my lost property is etc. it makes sense to have a variety of contact methods to reflect personal choice.
Hopefully this is an area where a 'we are one railway' culture change driven from the top of GBR can make a real difference.
I’ve had replies from the X account of Thameslink in real time, about significant delays caused by a trespasser on the railway at Burgess Hill. This allowed me to make an informed decision on whether to bail out or stay onboard.
The debate about whether X is left or right leaning is totally irrelevant to me.
I’ve had replies from the X account of Thameslink in real time, about significant delays caused by a trespasser on the railway at Burgess Hill. This allowed me to make an informed decision on whether to bail out or stay onboard.
The debate about whether X is left or right leaning is totally irrelevant to me.
Twitter/X can be a great tool, but not everybody will see that reply, even if they do have an account, because of how the algorithm feeds you content.
Equally, I've been on twitter before and the Admin has been posting 'it's the weekend' memes while the service has rapidly fell apart and no information is forthcoming on twitter, National Rail or the TOC's website.
Not helpful when the social media isn't "open" for the same hours as the trains are running. I.e. the way the just say "goodbye" on Twitter at end of "their" working day, even though trains are still running, often due to delays, leaving passengers in the lurch. Same when they haven't started early morning so are no help to passengers wanting the earliest trains of the day.
And it's the way that Twitter/X's algorithms have been tweaked that have resulted in me commencing my migration to Bluesky. Twitter/X's feed is now full of spam and messages I am not interested in, whereas Bluesky is fully focused on letting me see messages from those I follow.
I will use both for the time being, but as soon as most of those, I wish to follow, have moved to Bluesky then I will put my X account in stasis. Hopefully, most of the main transport operators will move across soon.
Twitter/X can be a great tool, but not everybody will see that reply, even if they do have an account, because of how the algorithm feeds you content.
Equally, I've been on twitter before and the Admin has been posting 'it's the weekend' memes while the service has rapidly fell apart and no information is forthcoming on twitter, National Rail or the TOC's website.
I think some of those posts are preprogramed for that day and may or may not be made by an actual person at such a time, doing so keeps up visibility on X , the accounts are not just their for disruption
Most also use Facebook, not sure if any have moved to Bluesky yet.
One of the problems is railway companies don't want to be seen as political. While there are social media sites such as Gab, truth social and gettr which are seen as "right wing" and the railways wouldn't want to associate with at the present moment Bluesky is seen as left wing and if a TOC was to associate with Bluesky it could be seen as political.
Not a user of social media, I decided to give it a try and look for information on any Northern disruption going on.
I Google “Northern trains disruption Twitter” and click the link to what I presume is Northern’s X page.
A third of the screen is taken up by a box nagging me to sign in or sign up to X, which I am not going to do.
The top post is about disruption TWO DAYS AGO on the Furness line.
The next posts in the list are -
November 2022 - news about last Pacer train service.
March 2024 - a reply to somebody called Jack, telling him that it is his responsibility to keep his phone charged so he can show his ticket.
September 2024 - a reply to somebody called Lila, telling her how to report a racist incident.
July 2022 - Northern offering a £1000 reward for information on who broke a train window.
December 2019 - picture of a Pacer in a scrapyard.
February 2022 - Rotherham Central station is closed due to flooding.
Useless. Or am I working it wrong? You never had this trouble with Ceerfax!
Well Twitter is owned by a member of a foreign country's new administration and is actively interfering with British politics so i don't see how being on Twitter can't be seen as political now.
Twitter or X is definitely is seen as becoming political but I would say it's still less politically charged than Bluesky. One of the issues with social media platforms is they are seen as generic communication things like the telephone, text messages or emails. In reality they are private companies which are there to make money and have their own agenda. This is particularly true of Twitter and Facebook.
Got no idea what you mean about Bluesky being political, its anti-political as far as i can tell as many people there want to get away from that drivel.
Not a user of social media, I decided to give it a try and look for information on any Northern disruption going on.
I Google “Northern trains disruption Twitter” and click the link to what I presume is Northern’s X page.
A third of the screen is taken up by a box nagging me to sign in or sign up to X, which I am not going to do.
The top post is about disruption TWO DAYS AGO on the Furness line.
The next posts in the list are -
November 2022 - news about last Pacer train service.
March 2024 - a reply to somebody called Jack, telling him that it is his responsibility to keep his phone charged so he can show his ticket.
September 2024 - a reply to somebody called Lila, telling her how to report a racist incident.
July 2022 - Northern offering a £1000 reward for information on who broke a train window.
December 2019 - picture of a Pacer in a scrapyard.
February 2022 - Rotherham Central station is closed due to flooding.
Useless. Or am I working it wrong? You never had this trouble with Ceerfax!
If you are not logged into Twitter the information you can see is severely limited and makes it pretty much useless, for that reason alone I'm surprised any companies now use it for public interaction.
Because many ordinary people aren't preoccupied with such matters. One could equally argue that Twitter's previous owners actively sought to manipulate public opinion by the kind of tweets they did or did not allow to be posted, and how thry banned certain people. I'm not sure where such arguments take us.
Nowhere, but only because you ignored the relevant part, they banned people.
Social media platforms require registration and they can and do ban people for any reason they please. It's their sandbox and nobody has any right of access.
A website is universally accessible to anyone with an internet connection, social media platforms are not, this alone is a good enough argument that SM shouldn't be the primary or preferential source of customer service for public services.
TOC Twitter feeds are often managed by people in the control office who can ask the controllers for information/listen in to conversations, as well as read the wires and pages. The 2-way communication via one person can also identify information gaps or problems on the ground.
I imagine that Bluesky will become more popular to retain these advantages.
And it's irrelevant to anyone else who just wants/wanted to use Twitter/X for communicating with businesses IMO, which is all most people ever wanted to do. Sure you can follow a celebrity and maybe reply and be wowed if your hero replies or likes what you wrote, but it's as much a business tool as anything else - or was.
Companies aren't going to decide to go on to Bluesky based on whether it's left or right leaning, but rather if that's where the audience now is. People are asking companies all the time on X if or when they're going to move to Bluesky. I don't think move is the right thing, but certainly joining as well is wise at this point. You can perhaps leave X in the future if you see usage fall enough.
I don't think a business should up and leave just because Elon went mad and X is now a platform promoting hate. You can ignore all that if you want, but still find out what's going on in real time when things go wrong - which is more valuable than summaries updated periodically on a website. After all, on X, you can find out what's happening from other passengers not just the company itself - so the TOC can get valuable information from 'crowdsourced' data which isn't possible on the website.
When everyone leaves X and moves elsewhere, that's going to be where you get the best information and you'll use that instead.
I rarely use X these days, and I haven't felt like I'm missing out anything like as much as I thought I might. I haven't deactivated my account, but I use Threads a lot and the engagement on there is significantly higher, despite me having 20 times fewer followers. As I don't pay for X, clearly my posts weren't being seen by hardly anyone in recent times.
Theirs tools that allow you to push your messages to multiple social media sites at once, eventually I imagine bluesky might be integrated into these tools. However TOCs aren't going to abandon one of the biggest social media platforms and move onto what is a relatively tiny one because Elon Musk gives them the ick isn't going to happen
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Not a user of social media, I decided to give it a try and look for information on any Northern disruption going on.
I Google “Northern trains disruption Twitter” and click the link to what I presume is Northern’s X page.
A third of the screen is taken up by a box nagging me to sign in or sign up to X, which I am not going to do.
The top post is about disruption TWO DAYS AGO on the Furness line.
The next posts in the list are -
November 2022 - news about last Pacer train service.
March 2024 - a reply to somebody called Jack, telling him that it is his responsibility to keep his phone charged so he can show his ticket.
September 2024 - a reply to somebody called Lila, telling her how to report a racist incident.
July 2022 - Northern offering a £1000 reward for information on who broke a train window.
December 2019 - picture of a Pacer in a scrapyard.
February 2022 - Rotherham Central station is closed due to flooding.
Useless. Or am I working it wrong? You never had this trouble with Ceerfax!
If you are not signed in you can only see the most liked tweets. This was brought in under the tail end of pre Musk twitter, likely to try to squeeze some data , therefore money , out of you.
Not a user of social media, I decided to give it a try and look for information on any Northern disruption going on.
I Google “Northern trains disruption Twitter” and click the link to what I presume is Northern’s X page.
A third of the screen is taken up by a box nagging me to sign in or sign up to X, which I am not going to do.
The top post is about disruption TWO DAYS AGO on the Furness line.
The next posts in the list are -
November 2022 - news about last Pacer train service.
March 2024 - a reply to somebody called Jack, telling him that it is his responsibility to keep his phone charged so he can show his ticket.
September 2024 - a reply to somebody called Lila, telling her how to report a racist incident.
July 2022 - Northern offering a £1000 reward for information on who broke a train window.
December 2019 - picture of a Pacer in a scrapyard.
February 2022 - Rotherham Central station is closed due to flooding.
Useless. Or am I working it wrong? You never had this trouble with Ceerfax!
Of course if you search "Northern trains disruption" the first two results are Northern's website, which should be treated as the main source of information (which should then be relayed through social media).
Elon keeps changing things. You used to be able to read a whole thread without being logged in, and I think you could even do an advanced search to find topics.
Right now you seem to be able to view one individual post that's linked to, but not read replies or follow ups, or see the parent post if it's part of a chain. So you must log in or create an account.
I am not logged in on all my devices so often I just give up as I can't be arsbothered to go through an incredibly buggy login process that sees the site stuck in a loop. Basically, it tries to log in with my Google account but that fails and it tries over and over. I am not even sure how I can stop it doing this. I have a unique login/password and 2FA via Google Authenticator, but the X login page seems pretty broken - but I really don't care these days.
Without getting into wider issues, that is the kind of fantasy that ordinary people find so tiresome. It usually means 'someone has expressed an opinion which is different to my narrow social circle'.
Without gettj into wider issues, that is the kind of fantasy that ordinary people find so tiresome. It usually means 'someone has expressed a strong opinion which is different to my narrow social circle'.
No it isn't. I can open my For You tab and find literal scientific racism within about 20 tweets. Like, not "hmm maybe it is not helpful to think of minorities like that", but actual scientific eugenic racism which is from the Nazi playbook. It is now extremely bad on there.
No it isn't. I can open my For You tab and find literal scientific racism within about 20 tweets. Like, not "hmm maybe it is not helpful to think of minorities like that", but actual scientific eugenic racism which is from the Nazi playbook. It is now extremely bad on there.
It's also pretty fatiguing. When I get home from work, sit on my sofa and scroll, I don't want to scroll through random moronic opinions or politics. I mute/block these people, but still more replaces it on my timeline.
Are we heading in a direction where there will be one app for the right and one for the left? It may be more harmonious and may suit those who enjoy an echo-chamber.
Nowhere, but only because you ignored the relevant part, they banned people.
Social media platforms require registration and they can and do ban people for any reason they please. It's their sandbox and nobody has any right of access.
A website is universally accessible to anyone with an internet connection, social media platforms are not, this alone is a good enough argument that SM shouldn't be the primary or preferential source of customer service for public services.
Elon has banned plenty of people he doesn't like, and he's the supposed champion of free speech. Free speech for some people that is.
Most people don't understand what freedom of speech actually means. It doesn't mean you are automatically given a platform to publish your thoughts. You can be censored or banned, if you breach the rules. That's one of the things about us all allowing our lives to be shared with others on platforms owned by oligarchs or corporations.
We accept it because they're 'free' but the rules can change at any time. Still, I guess back in the day, you could get barred from your local pub if you upset the landlord so it has always been the case that 'freedom of speech' isn't what a lot of people think it is.
For a company using a platform it doesn't own or control, there's always a risk. That's why I think many companies are going to cover other platforms too in the future, once they can get the relevant management tools set up to work as seamlessly as they do/did on X.
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Are we heading in a direction where there will be one app for the right and one for the left? It may be more harmonious and may suit those who enjoy an echo-chamber.
I hope not, as there used to be a time people could share their views and discuss/debate, and - shock - change their minds or compromise.
Politics has been gamified now, and people use social media platforms to score points and own the opposition, cheered on by the likes of Musk, Farage and many others. In recent weeks, we've heard people being signed up to work with Trump talking of wars and battles, and even threatening to arrest people who spoke against Trump or shut down media organisations that have said bad things. There's even a rumour Musk might buy MSNBC to turn that into Fox 'News' 2.0.
I think most people are sensible enough to have views they're willing to debate and listen to others with an open mind, but you're often not talking to these people online. They're paid shills, bots or agent provocateurs (increasingly AI based) that are only ever going to attack you.
As the computer worked out at the end of WarGames, the only winning move is not to play.
At the present moment Bluesky is seen as a political place for those on the left who are not happy with Twitter. I didn't say Twitter wasn't seen as political but rather it is at the present moment seen as less politically charged than Bluesky.
At the present moment Bluesky is seen as a political place for those on the left who are not happy with Twitter. I didn't say Twitter wasn't seen as political but rather it is at the present moment seen as less politically charged than Bluesky.
I haven't used Twitter since Musk got his grubby hands on it so it frustrates me that transport companies use X as their main status feed especially as you need to login to X to see then. Where I work (not a transport company) we have officially announced we are no longer using X. Lets just say I did all I could to speed up that process .
A question from an innocent in this technological jungle. How easy would it be for a consortium of rail, bus and ferry companies, Network Rail and the like, transport authorities and the like to set up their own messaging service? It would have controlled and restricted access for posting so that no post can appear except from the companies, etc. or with their approval. This would give a single source for all disruption and similar information and wouldn’t allow anything else. (I do not use Twitter/X or any of that lot.)
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