For example, download Watch Duty and get results there. Otherwise, go for it, man. Try it on the Internet and I hope it makes you feel better. I feel bad for them, honestly, you know? I’ve already experienced this. But the way I’ve coped is by building Watch Duty, not by shouting into the ether. We all have our coping mechanisms. Some are productive and others are not.
Screenshot: Courtesy of Watch Duty
Do you think that the fact that people can get more information about what’s happening on the ground will help them be smarter about what they say online? Or is all this shit going to happen again?
I don’t know, man. I wish I had a good answer that I could incorporate into your question, but I don’t really care about these people. It’s so uninteresting. People are still fleeing the fire right now. And that’s really what matters. I don’t need armchair journalists now. There are some great journalists that aren’t part of Watch Duty, like a group of people that are getting information out to the population on X, which is great. I’m glad they’re doing it. I wish they had a better platform for this. There are still great people on social media, but unfortunately you have to sift through Bitcoin porn and other random content that is currently being replaced by Chinese bots.
So what’s next? How is Watch Duty approaching the next few days of this particular fire, and then the fires beyond?
It’s the perfect time for a Mike Tyson expression: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” “Right now we are getting punched in the face repeatedly. When I’m in this mode, we don’t make strategic plans.
We are extraordinarily tactical. We focus on what is in front of us, just like a firefighter does. That’s what we’re doing today, keeping our servers online, feeding the engineers, making sure they can keep running as we experience explosive growth of three orders of magnitude. And then journalists also need sleep, need pep talks, need help. And so it’s really just “getting through it,” man. We are about to experience another wind event this evening. We’re far from done and tonight is going to be another damn bad night.
And in the long term? What is the future of how people use Watch Duty?
I can talk about long-term things because I’ve been thinking about them for ages. We’re really thinking a lot about what it looks like to have other disasters in Watch Duty. We are actively developing this now. We are working to ensure that we can do the same thing we did in Los Angeles during the next Hurricane Helene. Because these floods were disastrous. People weren’t warned enough and didn’t understand it. And there is good data that is not released to the general public. We want to be the voice of reason throughout these very difficult times. And so that’s the next step for us when we get over this nonsense.
It’s better to sit there in despair.
Yeah. I have to be constructive, you know?
