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Comment by seventhson | Hacker News Reader

We already have an emergency messaging system called Amber Alert. Just generalize that infrastructure a bit and you're halfway there.

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Maybe, but it would need to be treated as a separate system. I turned Amber Alerts off after being blasted awake at 2am over a missing child five hours away from me. The chances of me ever being able to help in a missing persons case is already incredibly slim. It would be impossible at 2am unless the kidnapper hides under my bed.

The current system is used in a suboptimal way, at least by authorities in my state.

Yeah I have Amber alerts turned off. I guess other alerts are still on on my iPhone which is probably as close to a government alerting system as you're going to get.

I really hope they don't do this. I already turned off those alerts because there are too many of them.

Why are so many children being abducted where you live?

Do you know of a better source for adrenochrome?

In some places the system is overused and alerts get issued in custody disputes, claims of abuse, etc. It doesn't always mean abducted by a predator or stranger and that's part of the problem.

> It doesn't always mean abducted by a predator or stranger

The overwhelming majority -- over 90% -- of children being abducted are taken by family[0], usually as a part of a custody dispute.

[0]: https://safeatlast.co/blog/child-abduction-statistics/

Yup. And I wish they'd make it clear. Not that I think people should be allowed to take the law into their own hands, but as courts are imperfect, I get why a good and loving parent might do this. There's a world of difference in how I would respond if I saw a concerned parent with their child illegally than how I would respond if I knew I was seeing an actual child predator.

Near a half dozen extremely impovershed reservations..

+1, this system should be improved with a topic based subscription so individuals can opt-in/out of lower level alerts, but keep the ability for local governments to blast everyone in an area for emergencies

That's already the case.

AMBER ALERT: Bike lane closure on State Street due to construction, use West Street for detour.

Yeah screw that haha, I'll take the Twitter clone for anything short of actual emergency.

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