Wildfire alert backfires as public blocks all government warnings | Hacker News Reader

Wildfire alert backfires as public blocks all government warnings

telegraph.co.uk

14 pointsjosephcsible5 comments

Never keen to exceed my low expectations of it, the Telegraph doesn't offer any data in support of its claim (ie that the public blocks all government warnings). The article rests on the indignation of a public policy analyst, a journalist and a group of X users.

Typically wretched stuff from a formerly great broadsheet that these days is only reliable in organizing rabid pile-ons and hounding people to their deaths.

While they have no evidence of big problems this sort of thing causes issues. Idiots use the alert system for stupid things, people respond by blocking them.

I've seen it locally, dodgy cell phone area, we were all being bombarded repeatedly about a missing hiker. The network apparently didn't understand and sent it every time we entered service again. There was some discussion of how to turn it off--that despite the fact that we were all hikers. (And, fools, a couple of us could perfectly well piece together what had happened. Her body's out in the desert, she didn't go to the mountain *that day*.)

Absolutely realistic. I have disabled warning on my phone because government was sending me warnings about fires - 50km+ from me or amber alert about missing kid - 70km from me. At that point it is just a spam service.

Worse, those amber alerts are really just custody disputes branded as “abductions”. They use the same word as when a stranger nabs a child and flees with it for nefarious reasons. Its disgusting. A father taking his own son because the mother has legal rights to it (or vice versa) might be against some court order but its inexcusable to use the word “abduction”.

I have zero faith that the government has chosen the right side in a custody dispute so I’ve had amber alerts disabled for ages. I don’t want to get in the middle of it.

Now if they were to invent a new alert system strictly for “rando nabbed a toddler from a park”, sure I’d opt in. But, luckily that really doesn’t happen.

Police love to “upsell” crimes. I guess I might do the same if my job depended on there being more crime. Reminds me of how a guy who urinates in public gets on the same sex offender registry as a really child molester. Inexcusable and only leads to public distrust.

I turned mine off permanently after spending time in New Jersey, that region positively spammed them.

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