This is what you get if you tread a company (that rightfully wants to make money) as a public service.
They should post on their own publicly accessible website.
This doesn't match my experience. When I go to a post on X, I can just ignore the login banner and I still see the post itself, just not any replies to it.
> Some users reported they didn’t need to log in to see the California Highway Patrol’s X post, which was sent via a URL created using the Bitly link shortener service. It’s currently unclear what percentage of people who received the push notification were able to view the information about the missing girl and what percentage hit X’s log-in gate. Overall, only 21 percent of US adults say they ever use X, according to the Pew Research Center, not all of whom may have the app installed on their phones.
And perhaps that's the test the California Highway Patrol applied too. But the premise of the test is unsound. The result deceives the unwary into relying upon undefined behaviour.
> the law enforcement agency linked to a post from its official X account, a practice it adopted six years ago.