Technology
BART was running with delays Thursday morning. | RJ Mickelson/The Standard
"Given Musk’s fascist destruction of this social media platform, will you be opening a Mastodon acct?"
So read a tweet Thursday that, somewhat surprisingly, prompted a reply in the form of a quote tweet from BART's account saying, "We might be going down with this ship, if indeed going under 🫡."
The transit agency said that though it is "actively considering other platforms," its large audience on Twitter was a reason that "we don't have plans to migrate to Mastodon."
One user cheekily replied, "Do you have plans to ever stop running strains at 'slower speeds due to weather'???", in apparent response to the ongoing delays on BART as the Bay Area continues to be battered by winter storms.
The string of tweets began with a summary from BART of its Board of Directors Workshop Thursday, which included discussion of its imminent financial crisis because of the steep drop in ridership brought on by the pandemic.
"Using Twitter has allowed us to show what responsive government looks like. We feel at this time, it is still a powerful tool to get this work done," BART said in an emailed statement. "That isn’t to say we are not exploring other platforms where we can reach new audiences, especially younger people. We are now on TikTok and we’ve done our first live stream on Twitch with another one planned for March."
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