Like, download Watch Duty and get results there. Otherwise, have at it, man. Have it online and hopefully it makes you feel better. I feel bad for them, honestly, you know? I’ve been through this before. But the way I approached building Watch Duty, was not by shouting into the ether. We all have our own ways of coping. Some are productive and some are not.
Screenshot: Courtesy of Watch Duty
Do you think that people being able to get more information about what’s going on on the ground will help them be smarter about what they say online? Or is all that shitposting going to happen?
I don’t know man. I wish I had a good answer to play with your question, but I don’t care about those people. It’s not very exciting. People are still running away from the fire now. And that’s what really matters. I don’t need armchair journalists now. There are great journalists who are not on Watch Duty, like a bunch of people who are there passing on information to people in X, which is good. I’m glad they do. I wish they had a better platform for it. There are still great people on social media, but unfortunately you have to filter out the Bitcoin porn and other random stuff that the Chinese bots are putting out at the moment.
So what’s next? How is Watch Duty approaching the next few days of this fire in particular, and then there are more fires than that?
This is a great moment for Mike Tyson’s quote: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Right now, we are being slapped in the face over and over again. When I’m in that mode, we don’t strategize.
We are extraordinarily resourceful. We focus on what’s in front of us, like a firefighter. That’s what we’re doing today, keeping our servers online, keeping the developers fed, making sure they’re able to keep this thing running as we meet the three goals of explosive growth. And of course journalists also need sleep, they need pep talks, they need help. And so really just “get over it,” man. We are about to experience another spiritual event tonight. We have not far to go and tonight will be another bad one.
What about the long term? What is the future of how people use Watch Duty?
I can talk about long-term things because I have been thinking about them for years. We’re thinking a lot about what seems to be another disaster on Watch Duty. We are developing that now. We’re working to make sure we can do the same thing we did in LA for the next Hurricane Helene. Because those floods were a disaster. People didn’t have enough warning, they don’t understand. And there is good data out there that can be brought to the masses. We want to be a voice of reason in all these really difficult times. That’s what’s next for us when we get past this nonsense.
Beats sat there dejected.
Yes. I must be building, you know?