
Ask HN: Urgent connection to Twitter support - yuvadam
HN,<p>For the past few hours Israel and Gaza have been exchanging rocket and missile attacks, with many casualties on both sides.<p>I am the admin for an automated emergency alert twitter feed that thousands of users depend on to receive alerts on incoming attacks.<p>Currently, we are approaching API limits and require immediate relaxation of some of the limits.Support tickets have been filed, but no answers just yet, and escalation is required.<p>Any connections to Twitter support staff that can help us expedite handling of this ticket would be awesome, and would be helpful to many who depend on this feed during this difficult time.<p>Thanks,
@yuvadm
======
yuvadam
Success! Twitter @support just got back to me with news that the rate limits
have been increased!

HN, you are awesome!

~~~
elwell
See, HNers, procrastination habits can be put to good use!

------
anigbrowl
I'm curious, is this service service equally available/relevant to civilians
on both sides of the conflict, or only one? I don't ask to be judgmental, I
recognize that politically/legally it may not even be possible to serve both
sides. I just wondered if the automated nature of the service allows for it to
be apolitical.

~~~
yuvadam
Unfortunately, it caters mostly to the Israeli side, as it is in Hebrew and
relies on Hebrew sources of information.

I would very much be interested in helping build a similar system for
Palestinians in Gaza, but from past attempts to organize similar cooperations,
help is not necessarily wanted.

That being said, I am aware of several Palestinian users in Gaza who do follow
this account for various purposes.

~~~
djyaz1200
Respect the intent to make a tool for peace, not a weapon. Want to point out
that "Various purposes" might include the people shooting the missiles seeing
if/where they land? These communications might better be conducted via bulk
PM?

~~~
yuvadam
Possibly, but most reports never mention specific coordinates.

Israelis already have complete drone coverage of Gaza Strip, they don't need
reports on hits. Palestinians cannot possibly use coordinates to aim homebrew
rockets being used. Hit radius is e.g. around 1km for far range rockets.

~~~
aerialfish
During the last flare up with Hezbollah, my friends in the Haifa suburbs told
me that there were some gag orders on some rockets that landed near them to
prevent Hezbollah from knowing that they had successful hits. But I suppose
the rockets of Hamas vs Hezbollah would be different.

EDIT: Seems like their rockets are reaching Tel Aviv so I guess they aren't as
crude as they used to be...

~~~
hyperliner
Those rockets have long range, not precision.

------
marcosscriven
What's the actual account you're posting these emergency alerts on? I looked
at your @yuvadm account and couldn't see any retweets.

(Side note, I'd perhaps change your Archimedes joke in your Twitter
description, given where you are and what you're doing)

~~~
reledi
[https://twitter.com/rotternews](https://twitter.com/rotternews)

Source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8007093)

------
bilal2206
Is your twitter feed informing about the bombs falling on Gaza? (no sarcasm)

A link to the twitter feed? Thanks.

~~~
yuvadam
It does, but only based on second-hand reports. See my additional response on
the sibling thread.

------
joshfraser
Here's a link to the Google Translated feed for @rotternews. (I used the
mobile version due to formatting issues w/ the standard version)

[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=iw&tl=en&u=https://mobile.twitter.com/rotternews&usg=ALkJrhihAUyj_ahsD6rMj4qEOBGq30-7eQ)

~~~
pron
If anyone reads it, please don't mistake it for a mainstream Israeli news
organization. Rotter News is a fringe right wing news website.

~~~
davidkatz
It is. It also happens to be very good at reporting live rocket hits fast,
which makes it a valuable resource regardless of their politics (which I don't
agree with).

------
kungfooguru
I think you mean, "Many casualties on the Palestinian side." Has ANYONE been
killed in Israel? While Gaza is bombarded and dozens are dead, including
children.

Don't try to equate the oppressor with the oppressed.

~~~
judah
Nor is the oppressor the side with fewer casualties. Germany lost far more
soldiers and civilians in the Second World War, yet that racist regime were
clealy the oppressors, whose end came only by force.

So it is with Hamas.

~~~
lostlogin
It's annoying when people we don't like win elections isn't it? EDIT: Which
countries weren't racist in the second world war? All the allied countries I
know anything about certainly were.

~~~
EGreg
It's more than annoying when said people proceed to summarily exterminate
and/or expel all members of the democratically elected government belonging to
the rival party, and bring about a quasi-religious violent regime which kills
its own people for ideological ends.

Also, it is not ok to use your own civilian population as human shields, raise
a generation of kids to become violent martyrs for your cause, and sacrifice
their lives for your ideological war, which include things like the
"elimination of a Jewish state in Israel".

Hamas killing Palestinians living in Gaza who are having a wedding, which
wasn't Islamic enough: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEud-
cEjwQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEud-cEjwQU)

Indoctrinating children to hate and "kill Jews" to "liberate Palestine":
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow's_Pioneers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow's_Pioneers)

By the way, in Hamas' view, "liberate Palestine" means to rid it of a Jewish
state completely. If they took all that money to actually improve the
education and quality of life of their citizens (which is what they are,
essentially), they could be a legitimate government of a legitimate state.
They already effectively have a state in the Gaza Strip. But their leaders
would prefer to fight their ideological war and sacrifice their own people for
it. As often is the case, it's the leaders of the people with their
ideological ideas who are most responsible for the deaths of their own
population.

~~~
justin66
> They already effectively have a state in the Gaza Strip.

I don't understand why anyone would say that. The things that differentiate
Gaza and the west bank from a sovereign state are precisely the basis for the
horrible conflict happening there.

~~~
EGreg
Hardly. The goal of Hamas "armed resistance" as they call it is a united
Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, no land swaps etc. This is an
ideological position with zero compromise. Hamas' understanding of
"occupation" is exactly that Jews have a state in the area.

Gaza could become a sovereign Palestinian state, it doesnt need a military to
do so. No one is occupying it or attacking it, and it receives tons of
American money. The problem is that their leaders are ideological crackpots,
and many are corrupt on top of that, and they havent built up their economy,
infrastructure, education etc in 7-8 years they controlled it. Instead they
spent all their efforts on violent methods to advance an ideological agenda,
and used their own people as human shields and used "state" funded TV and
social centers to teach their kids to hate.

~~~
justin66
> Gaza could become a sovereign Palestinian state, it doesnt need a military
> to do so.

A state with entirely benign neighbors could, theoretically, endure without a
military (not that such a state really exists... even Monaco has a few
soldiers). Not being _permitted_ to have a military does preclude a state from
being considered sovereign.

In any case, you said "They already effectively have a state in the Gaza
Strip." That's silly on a few levels, independent of the politics.

> No one is occupying it or attacking it

I know little about the conflict but I'm quite certain the people living there
consider the blockade an aggressive act. I certainly would.

> The problem is that their leaders are ideological crackpots, and many are
> corrupt on top of that, and they havent built up their economy,
> infrastructure, education etc in 7-8 years they controlled it.

Gazans are definitely very badly served by the homicidal lunatics they've
voted into office. I'd say the problem is a lot bigger than that. The lunatics
are exploiting the situation but the conflict is a lot older than they are.

~~~
EGreg
Yeah the Gazans are very badly served by Hamas as their leaders. Hamas could
have taken the opportunity of having the entire area essentially self governed
to set a shining example of Palestinian self government and focus on actually
helping their people and grow the economy, develop things with thw money they
get from the US etc. In fact they could work with Israel and other countries
to do it. But they choose the path of violence which makes the US, EU, UN and
others label them a terrorist organization, and that hurts the regular people
in the Gaza strip.

As for the blockade - it is there to try and prevent arms smuggling into Gaza
which has happened before (via tunnels, boats etc) from groups in Iran, Syria,
Egypt. Iran as aa state actually delivered arms to Hamas and Hezbollah. It
uses the Palestinians as a wedge against Israel being in the region (which it
refers to as the Zionist regime). In fact, to many Arab states, Palestinian
Arabs are often just a political tool but when it comes to helping them they
have a worse record than Israel. Consider the relationship of Kuwait with
Palestinians, 500,000 of which they expelled following the Gulf War with NO
right of return, for siding with Saddam. Consider the feud of the Hashemite
dynastry with the PLO -- look up Black September in Jordan or how 7000
Palestinians in west bank were summarily killed during the 1967 war. Not much
outcry was going on when Jordan controlled the West Bank. But when Israel
controls it, there is a great outcry about how they live there. I would like
to say that the outcry should have been in ALL cases. The Kurds in Turkey and
Iraq have been fighting for independence for over 100 years and hardly anyone
talks about Turkey's "occupation" of them, or Saddam's gassing of the kurds
with Mustard gas after the Gulf war for siding with the USA (short version: we
betrayed them and left after we achieved our ends just like we did with
muhajideen and others who helped us win wars against our enemies back then).

Anyway -- it's a complex scenario, and history is replete with violent
leaders. Arab states originally wanted to see the Jewish state completely
gone, and for it to belong to Syria! And earlier than 1948, Arabs would never
want to work with any organized Jewish groups, to create one state. That was
the conclusion of the Peel commission, which said the only way is to separate
into two states. Look up "Al Husseyni" on wikipedia for example.

Today, the way out is to elect moderate leaders who reject violent resistance
in west bank and gaza. This should be OBVIOUS. If gaza doesnt attack Israel it
will mot be physically attacked. In fact if someone else attacks Gaza, Israel
can help defend it. Furthermore, if they provide a great education for their
children, increase economic ties with Israel, and actually ENFORCE normal laws
like against stop smuggling qassam rockets into Gaza, or firing them, or
killing people, etc. then the blockade can be lifted eventually and they can
trade freely with other nations.

One thing is obvious: if Gaza lays down their arms Israel would NOT go in
there or attack anyone. Gaza leaders can form a state of their own and go work
with other countries to build it up for their people. But the current leaders
have a stangelehold on Gaza. This often happens when an army leaves as
suddenly as Israel. This happened when England left India after Gandhi (a
civil war in which by some counts 1,000,000 people died) and it's happening in
Iraq with ISIS now. It's unfortunate. But we havent learned how to do nation
building properly.

------
stephenitis
Is HN the new emergency technical support now? I thought twitter would have a
redphone to handle request like these...

~~~
dang
No, HN is not for technical support requests. We normally demote these, but
didn't see this one on the front page until a minute ago. It's nice that it
did some good, but we're burying it now.

------
adeptus
Possible Work around?.... Create second twitter account, and announce it from
the first twitter account periodically. Make new announcements on second
twitter account.

~~~
yuvadam
We'd rather not fragment our content in this way, and even if we did, updating
our automated scripts to handle this scenario wouldn't be trivial.

------
exacube
You should probably include your contact, and twitter handle?

~~~
yuvadam
Included, my personal handle is @yuvadm

------
sjs382
What account is this that's hitting the limits? Or what application?

~~~
yuvadam
No app, just a simple feed that we post tweets to from various sources via
API. Further details will be gladly discussed with @support staff.

~~~
macNchz
Why are you being secretive about the details? You may never hear back from
Twitter support, but in hiding things you may miss ideas, opportunities and
resources that HN users can provide to scale your feed in different ways.

~~~
yuvadam
No reason to keep things secret, it's just that the entire content is highly
localized (specifically, it's all Hebrew) and wouldn't mean much to non-local
users.

~~~
mayneack
Because it's controversial I assume.

------
raphaelrk
This thread brings out a lot of partisanship. yuvadm can't warn others of
incoming rocket attacks without being criticized for it? Are people upset that
he could potentially be reducing casualties? Ridiculous. Spew hate elsewhere.

------
arasmussen
Messaged some friends who used to intern at Twitter and know people. Good
luck!

~~~
yuvadam
Thanks!

------
Aldo_MX
I understand the times are critical, and I apologize in advance for giving a
suggestion at a bad time like this, but while @support answers you, why not
check Faye[1] + HAProxy[2]?

This may not be as convenient as Twitter, but in case the answer from Twitter
is negative, you can use these tools to broadcast updates in real time (I
assume at this point, scalability is already an issue, and this is why I added
HAProxy to the formula).

[1] [http://faye.jcoglan.com](http://faye.jcoglan.com)

[2] [http://www.haproxy.org](http://www.haproxy.org)

~~~
yuvadam
Thanks for the suggestion! Twitter is being used since many users already have
it setup including push notifications.

I would love to build a push system of my own (it's also right up my alley),
but onboarding users to a proprietary system would be significantly harder.

------
ar7hur
To put things in context, Israel killed at least 24 people in Gaza today [1],
including children. Did they have access to Twitter, let alone any
telecommunication mean, let alone food and water? Sorry, but I really don't
see how your twitter account being rate-limited or whatever has the slightest
importance in this tragedy.

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-
tensions/i...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-
tensions/index.html?hpt=hp_t2)

~~~
Forgotmypw12
To put things in context, after receiving a warning call from the IDF that
their building was going to be bombed, the head of the household ushered the
children onto the roof as human shields.

[http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-
tensions/i...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/08/world/meast/mideast-
tensions/index.html)

~~~
Domenic_S
Shameful that you're being downvoted. FTA:

> _Official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that six were killed. Those
> killed were forming a "human shield" on the roof of a home belonging to
> members of Hamas' militant wing, Palestinian sources said. Two were
> children, WAFA and Palestinian medical sources said._

~~~
Grue3
Ah, same tactic Putin's bandits are using in Ukraine. Absolutely despicable.

------
judk
Problem has been solved, mods please backpage the rageful Israel-vs-Palestine
debate.

~~~
EGreg
what does backpaging mean?

------
junk3d
I have no contact in twitter, but you can try contacting twitter support via
[https://www.linkedin.com/](https://www.linkedin.com/)

There are about 3k people from twitter on linkedin. I am sure one of them
might be able to help you.

------
msantos
This is probably relevant:
[https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/486203341622370304](https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/486203341622370304)

 _" Peter Lerner

Israel Defense Forces Spokesman for International Media & Commander of the IDF
Social Media activities.."_

    
    
        Download code red app to see what's happening in Israel & where rockets are landing 
        https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/red-alert-israel/id873642097?ls=1&mt=8

------
raverbashing
Maybe you should think about putting up an rss feed, or throttling yourself
the information posted to kind of sum them up in the meantime

~~~
yuvadam
Good suggestion. An RSS feed sort of exists already, and twitter is just a
better vehicle to deliver these alerts.

We could try to throttle ourselves, and better filter e.g. duplicates, that is
true.

~~~
raverbashing
I think if the focus is mobile you can try setting up a very lightweight page
with the latest events (with a cache in front, something that is updated every
1min or maybe 5min should be enough)

~~~
Blackthorn
They need real time. 5 minutes is not "real time". Twitter is real time.

They need to meet their audience where their audience can meet them. Just
about every phone nowadays can access Twitter in an immediate and obvious way.
Twitter will meet their audience where their audience needs to be met.

~~~
raverbashing
Actually the definition of real time is: it meets the time constraint of your
problem. It doesn't matter if this time constraint is 1ms, 1s or 1h. Of course
it's harder to meet a 1ms time constraint so most problems fall into that
category.

Hence, if their time constraint is 5min, fine by them, otherwise the question
stands: what is their constraint.

And Twitter _is not real time_ (this is obvious if you ever used it - it is
more visible in the mobile version), there's no guarantee that if a tweet was
sent by an account A in time T and the timeline of someone who follows A is
opened some seconds later that tweet will show up.

------
bhartzer
Not sure if it will help, but I've contact a few Twitter folks I know and
alerted them to this thread.

------
reubeningber
Keep up the good work!!!

------
leccine
I prefer planning over firefighting...

~~~
yuvadam
I actually contacted @support 3 months ago about this problem, and they
dismissed it as a non-issue.

~~~
leccine
I mean not relying on Twitter on communicating your message...

------
hnriot
"In the words of Archimedes, give me a long enough lever, and a place to rest
it - or I will kill one hostage every hour."

Sure - that will get you priority with Twitter support!

~~~
yuvadam
[https://xkcd.com/857/](https://xkcd.com/857/)

~~~
hnriot
right - that really makes it fine. I get the joke, I just don't think that
sort of comment will help their cause much.

------
tenken
just respect the usage limits like any other service being provided for you
for free.

------
korzun
No links to your service. Running 'emergency feed' that has thousands of users
depending on it with API limits without factoring in rate limiting ahead of
time.

Not to mention that Israel has active defense systems that alert your general
area via sirens when missiles are coming.

Why is this on front page?

~~~
serf
because it's not very common that this community can potentially pitch in to
save lives on an immediate basis, and this happens to be one of those
occasions.

those relying on the service should not be penalized by the software
development practices of the person who wrote it with the best of intentions,
and the opportunity existed for that to be avoided via community outreach (and
it worked).

~~~
korzun
Why would anybody in Israel rely on such 'service' when they have fully
automated missile detection system that sounds alarms within the region of
possible impact.

Not to mention that twitter feed that gets it's news from another web site is
a giant waste of time if you are trying to avoid rockets.

It seems to me you drank the kool-aid, without any fact checking.

If you want to do the 'lives' angle, if my life was at risk I would rely on
billion dollar missile defense system. Not a delayed Twitter feed.

~~~
judah
Alarm sounding isn't totally reliable. One rocket hit a northern city, Hadera,
60 miles outside of Gaza today. No alarm that instance, I'm told.

------
devilsdevil
This is horrible.

But you can be sure if the US were launching missles and a Twitter feed were
used to warn the targets then the owner of the account would be an enemy of
the state.

War is horrible. The internet brings us all closer to it. But you are
basically asking an American corporation to supply a war effort with
ammunition to your side.

~~~
yuvadam
Again, I will not comment on the political aspect of this specific campaign.
(Hit my feed to get a sense of my personal opinions if you are truly
interested.)

I care about information dissemination and about helping humans on both side
of a conflict to have better insight into the chaos that is occurring around
them.

------
Link-
What about the below stats live from Ghaza? I think these Palestinian's
twitter API quota has already been reached and went beyond any limit too.

\- 447 heavy rockets, \- 374 air strike aggression, \- 39 marine bombs, \- 111
targeted homes, \- 17 homes completely destroyed, \- 95 homes partially
destroyed, \- 2 masjids attacked, \- 1 hospital attacked, \- 1 ambulance car
attacked.

I can understand war, I understand loss and fear, but I can't understand how
such a silly thing has reached Hacker News's front page.

~~~
yuvadam
Please, I completely understand, and trust me our views on this issue aren't
very different.

My goal is to disseminate breaking news and alerts as quickly and widely as
possible, to whomever needs it.

~~~
Link-
As I do understand and empathize with your cause. And trust that I'm not
looking for a political argument or the likes. The comment above is a painful
cry out towards the absurdity of the situation in an attempt to shed some
light on the colossal 'gap' between the worries of both sides..

~~~
pron
Yes, the gap is certainly absurd (though I'm not sure about the validity of
the numbers you quoted). But there are many absurdities about this conflict.
This is what I posted here during the previous spat (exactly 600 days ago):

 _The mutual bloodshed is terrible, and, as a resident of Tel Aviv I 'm
personally affected, but there is one thing that has always perplexed me a
bit, which is the perception of the actual ferocity of the conflict.
Obviously, every death is a terrible loss, but this forum is fond of numbers,
so while we're on the subject, here are some numbers:

The total number of deaths in the entire Israeli-Arab conflict over the past
70 years or so, is - according to Wikipedia - under 100,000. Out of which,
about 25,000 are Israeli, a similar number are Palestinians, and the rest, I
guess are casualties of all the other fighting arab countries combined,
although the total seems to me a bit high. That's the total for the past 70
years.

By comparison, in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, Wikipedia puts the number
of deaths at about 30,000 in each country in the last year alone. And the
Mexican drug war has claimed the lives of about 56,000 since 2006; some
estimates go as high as 100,000.

So, not to compare suffering, but the entire Israeli-Arab conflict has
claimed, over the last 70 years, more or less the same number of lives as the
drug war in Mexico in the past 6._

In short, both sides are trying to recruit the world's support for what is, in
reality, a very low-intensity conflict compared to just about any other
violent conflict, anywhere else in the world.

~~~
Link-
And Wikipedia is a credible resource for providing accurate numbers? How about
you spend a couple of hours tonight monitoring #GazaUnderAttack
([https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gazaunderattack&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gazaunderattack&src=typd))
on Twitter, and let's both count the number of casualties (in the pictures)
for the night. May I remind you these are human beings; children, women and
young girls murdered, they're not soldiers @pron. Numbers are irrelevant in
analyzing the situation or the conflict. Arab Leaders are to be damned for
being so passive about all these atrocities (Libyan and Syrian civil wars
included) and even contributing to some. That said, 'nothing' justifies
'Genocide'.

~~~
benjiz
The irony of pointing out that Wikipedia lacks perfect credibility and then
citing twitter posts as a source!

Those pictures under the #GazaUnderAttack are often fake (e.g. from other
conflicts, such as Syria) as pointed out by the BBC [1] just yesterday.

Twitter posts are about as useful and hysterical (and in the literal meaning,
not funny) as YouTube comments and for the large part do nothing to promote
useful discussion or accurate reporting.

More to the point, why are you politicizing a discussion that so far has been
thankfully apolitical?

[1]: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-
trending-28198622](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-28198622)

~~~
dai_pole
Anyone whom can be bothered to read the Wikipedia "talk pages" can see for
themselves that Wikipedia articles are edited to be thoroughly biased
concerning Palestine/Israeli affairs.

I find it strange that you created an account less than 20 minutes ago to take
part in the "political discussion" yourself, unless you're working
professionally as part of the "hasbara" effort?!

~~~
PavlovsCat
If they hadn't posted that link (to the BBC), I would have.. and if I didn't
already have an account, I would have made one, just for that one post.
_Someone_ had to point it out.

~~~
dai_pole
Well of course, "someone" has to post the propaganda, otherwise the public
might find out the truth.

Which photos are the BBC referring to? They don't reference them so that calls
into question the veracity of their claims.

