… why should they be on the hook for something that was and should remain free, especially for an account like this. This is the same social media garbage fire that wrongly labeled the BBC and PBS and state sponsored media.

if elmu doesn't want them posting on twitter, it's his call, no reason they should pay when they're the one providing a service to him (relevancy)

guess tsunami alerts on the platform just weren't worth that much to him

It may be a point worthy of discussion: Probably in the "old days", government agencies would pay for ads in print newspapers or magazines or for radio ads. Similarly, if the government (except for members of Congress) send mail via US Postal Service, the government has to pay the postage.

So it's not a totally crazy question to ask if a government agency should have to pay a fee to use a private service like Twitter.

Presumably the government agency would have to do a cost/benefit analysis on running their own service versus paying to outsource it.

you think government agencies should be paying for this?

It seems neither do they.

Why should twitter not be paying the government for information that lets them inform their users of emergencies?