Good points all. The issue really boils down to the fact that vehicle safety issues must be handled by manufacturers in a very controlled and accountable way. The only way to do this is to sanction a specific channel (in this case, the Toyota CEC and our dealers) as that channel, which has the capability to both help diagnose and write up the complaint into a database for this purpose.
Me and Erica? We're "just Marketing" people perusing the boards. Our ability to collect information from owners here is limited to qualitative data - quantitative is either impossible or very unreliable, and therefore not suitable for satisfying regulatory requirements. It's much better for things like "do I need a third cupholder in the front?" and much worse for things like "my car doesn't feel like it's braking right." So is this statement CYA? If that's the term you prefer, ok.
That said, social media is still relatively new for Toyota. We're learning how to better organize qualitative data from spaces like this to give our other non-Marketing colleagues better advanced information. It will come, it's just not there right now.