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I can totally understand why Americans would want to silence these. I'm from the UK and I was in Central Park with my wife and kids when we got an 'Amber Alert'

by willyt 4y ago

I can totally understand why Americans would want to silence these. I'm from the UK and I was in Central Park with my wife and kids when we got an 'Amber Alert' which said something like 'Black Ford SUV reg XYZ123' or something equally cryptic. It was not long after the terrorist attack in Nice where a guy drove a truck thorough a crowd of people walking beside the beach. Everyone's phones started going at the same time and we assumed it was some kind of disaster warning (the second worst level of disaster after a Red Alert?) as did many other tourists in the park! It went off again on the subway on the way back to the apartment and all the New Yorkers were totally unfazed by it. I asked the woman next to me what it was, she just said ignore it. I googled it later and it turned out an ex boyfriend had not showed up from picking their daughter up from school in a small town at the other end of New York state a couple of hundred miles away. Talk about crying wolf, I hope they have a different sound for when there actually is an inbound rogue North Korean nuke, otherwise 20 million people are going to think 'fuck's sake' and silence their phones without looking...

petee 4y ago
Ex boyfriend disappearing with a child is totally worth an Amber Alert, and a couple hundred miles is only a couple hours drive by the time they put the alert out...its easy enough to just keep an eye out for a license plate. Nobody is going to know for sure if its a false alarm, or if we'll wind up with a murdered child until after the fact, so why wait or ignore it?
- javajosh 4y ago
  Clearly you haven't been involved in a child custody case. If you had, you'd know the kinds of tricks people will play, up-to-and-including falsely claiming the child has been kidnapped and is under threat. Family court never, and I mean NEVER, holds anyone accountable for false accusation, and there is a subset of family law attorneys in every town who knows this and uses it, if they get a chance. The collateral damage, "boy who cried wolf" style, is just another unhappy side-effect of this practice. As for the risk of a murdered child, well, if that argument works for you, then why stop there? Why should police have to wait for a search warrant...what if we end up with a murdered child? Why should police have to avoid using deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect...what if we end up with a murdered child? Of course, we already have a (rather large, vocal) group of people who believe exactly this, which is why CPS is called on parents who, for example, run into a bakery, with their minivan idling with 6 kids in it, and get arrested for child endangerment. It's easier to take an extreme, confident position when you don't know anything about it.
- mikelward 4y ago
  IIRC they are just as loud and annoying as an earthquake alert. This makes earthquake alerts less useful. Amber/Silver/Blue alerts should be more like a regular notification.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Then again, many bad things happen at a constant rate somewhere within a 400 mile circle. If all of those bad things generated an alert to all people within that circle, and then consider that every square inch is part of infinite other overlapping such circles... Evereyone but a few researchers in Antarctica would have useless phones that don't do anything but scream these alerts at all times. The idea doesn't scale unless the events are actually quite selective, and a missing person that isn't even necessarily missing yet probably shouldn't qualify. Even if you are sympathetic and care about that kid, it doesn't matter because it doesn't work anyway. Everyone just ignores the alert. It's just not a reasonable balance between how much some bad thing matters and how many people's attention are commandeered for it. Every single death even from peaceful old age after a rich full life is a tragedy, but the rest of the world can not care about it. Literally can not, because it doesn't scale. Those tragedies are happening at a constant rate of many new ones every second of every day at all times. Instead there are a much smaller set of people who care about or who's job is to care about each one, and that set is smaller than "everyone in a 400 mile circle". The fact that a person can drive 200 miles in any direction in a few hours doesn't change that. It's probably a good thing for the system to exist, but if it's used the wrong way, it's entire utility and reason for existing is sabotaged and nullified. However the real point not about the alert system but about a carrier's ability to control your device more than yourself, even if you own your device outright, that I do not say is a good thing that it exists. I accept that there's not much to do about it. I do have a rooted phone running LineageOS, which gives me a bit more control, but I don't kid myself that that really means much. But I don't think it's good or right.
- 95014_refugee 4y ago
  Reductio ad absurdum, wouldn't it be better just to have everyone's phone explode? Chances are pretty good the (alleged) killer will have one on them, so let's just blow everyone up. If you don't, we'll end up with a murdered child, so why not?
  - burkaman 4y ago
    Reductio ad absurdum, why not make all communication illegal without the explicit written consent of the recipient? Then you'll never have to be bothered by anyone ever again.
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      Is that supposed to be an absurd proposition? Because that is something I want. Stuff like advertising should be straight up banned, and it should be considered abuse to get a phone call from someone you have not explicitly whitelisted, especially corporations and governments. No one should presume they have an IRQ line to your brain and attention. They don't get to interrupt you with bullshit you couldn't care less about.
      - burkaman 4y ago
        Ok, what about an air raid siren? Someone speaking to you on the subway? A letter from the government about an upcoming election? A road sign warning of closures? Someone with a megaphone directing traffic?
        brainchild-adam 4y ago
        I'd argue it's about the level of intrusion and your options in dealing with it. My phone blaring at me at any time w/o warning and with no way to control this behavior seems quite a bit more intrusive to me than your examples.
- placatedmayhem 4y ago
  There are significant questions about the efficacy of AMBER Alerts, which is concerning given the massive disruption and potential for negative conditioning for other government-originated alerts (severe weather, terrorism, etc.). Here's one paper from 2014 that analyzes AMBER Alert cases compared to those without an alert: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.1003577 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.10...
- burkaman 4y ago
  Just want to go against the grain and say that I agree with you and disagree with fellow commenters comparing their phone buzzing once in a while to unwarranted police raids or government-sponsored mass murder.
  - izacus 4y ago
    The phone "buzzing once in a while" teaches everyone to ignore this buzzing and makes this massively counter productive - people will ignore it when serious disaster happens.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      I guess I just don't believe you, and it will take more than people complaining to convince me. In the situation described in this thread, I cannot imagine everyone in Central Park dismissing this notification without anyone saying "hang on everyone, it says missile instead of amber this time". I have lived in several big cities in the US and have gotten these alerts less than once a month, sometimes with years in between. It is not a scourge on society. I do think you should be able to disable them, but I think that even if explicitly given the option, most people would leave them on.
      - mardifoufs 4y ago
        If you knew the alert could be about something hundreds of km's away, and that it usually is, it's very likely people would instinctively turn off the very loud alert instinctively. There's a reason why "alert fatigue" exists. And it has been documented in tons of different settings. Too many alerts and warnings are worse than none. Is there any reason to believe the same phenomenon wouldn't happen in this case?
        burkaman 4y ago
        Yes, because they happen so infrequently and are widely known to only be used for alerts that most people think are actually important, even if they aren't always relevant to every recipient.
- eastbound 4y ago
  So one child which might have died is the same as nuking NYC? (and 99% it’s custody dispute, no harm done)
sph 4y ago
Do we have Amber Alerts in UK? I never got one, and I'd like to be told if I'm about to get nuked or an asteroid is imminent.
- david_allison 4y ago
  Emergency alerts (not Amber) are planned in 2023. Apparently there was a test today on some networks. https://www.gov.uk/alerts https://www.gov.uk/alerts
i_am_jl 4y ago
>I can totally understand why Americans would want to silence these. Oh, it gets better. We also, by default, get alerts for severe/extreme weather. Nothing like getting an emergency alert because a tornado touched down on the other side of the state, or a flash-flood warning while you're at home, 300' above the nearest body of water.
- jenkstom 4y ago
  That's really not at all fair, the NWS has put a lot of effort since the Joplin tornado into localizing warnings as much as possible to the affected area. They may geolocate the warning based on the tower rather than the phone, but that's still a long way away from "across the state". And you maybe should look into it, but flash floods have nothing to do with bodies of water. You could be 1k feet above a lake on the side of a mountain, but that mudslide caused by torrential rain might be a problem for you.
- iLemming 4y ago
  I live in North Texas, the weather alerts are pretty accurate here. With climate change, tornadoes and hurricanes are being pushed out of their natural places and regular seasons, and it's becoming normal for having a storm coming seemingly out of nowhere. We do appreciate here those alert broadcasts.
uhtred 4y ago
I don't seem to get these alerts since I switched to a de-googled version of android
r00fus 4y ago
On iOS you can opt out of almost all of these. Concerned people can keep them on. Defaults may be an issue here, but it's nowhere near as concerning as government having hooks in the baseband.
bonestamp2 4y ago
There are two different levels of these alerts. The phones allow people to silence Amber Alerts. The higher level is a National Alert, and those cannot be silenced. They shouldn't be sending out Amber Alerts for something a couple hundred miles away, because as you said, that causes people to ignore them. In my area, we only get very localized Amber Alerts, which makes them pretty rare... 1-2 per year.

by willyt 4y ago

petee 4y ago

Ex boyfriend disappearing with a child is totally worth an Amber Alert, and a couple hundred miles is only a couple hours drive by the time they put the alert out...its easy enough to just keep an eye out for a license plate. Nobody is going to know for sure if its a false alarm, or if we'll wind up with a murdered child until after the fact, so why wait or ignore it?

javajosh 4y ago
Clearly you haven't been involved in a child custody case. If you had, you'd know the kinds of tricks people will play, up-to-and-including falsely claiming the child has been kidnapped and is under threat. Family court never, and I mean NEVER, holds anyone accountable for false accusation, and there is a subset of family law attorneys in every town who knows this and uses it, if they get a chance. The collateral damage, "boy who cried wolf" style, is just another unhappy side-effect of this practice. As for the risk of a murdered child, well, if that argument works for you, then why stop there? Why should police have to wait for a search warrant...what if we end up with a murdered child? Why should police have to avoid using deadly force to stop a fleeing suspect...what if we end up with a murdered child? Of course, we already have a (rather large, vocal) group of people who believe exactly this, which is why CPS is called on parents who, for example, run into a bakery, with their minivan idling with 6 kids in it, and get arrested for child endangerment. It's easier to take an extreme, confident position when you don't know anything about it.
mikelward 4y ago
IIRC they are just as loud and annoying as an earthquake alert. This makes earthquake alerts less useful. Amber/Silver/Blue alerts should be more like a regular notification.
Brian_K_White 4y ago
Then again, many bad things happen at a constant rate somewhere within a 400 mile circle. If all of those bad things generated an alert to all people within that circle, and then consider that every square inch is part of infinite other overlapping such circles... Evereyone but a few researchers in Antarctica would have useless phones that don't do anything but scream these alerts at all times. The idea doesn't scale unless the events are actually quite selective, and a missing person that isn't even necessarily missing yet probably shouldn't qualify. Even if you are sympathetic and care about that kid, it doesn't matter because it doesn't work anyway. Everyone just ignores the alert. It's just not a reasonable balance between how much some bad thing matters and how many people's attention are commandeered for it. Every single death even from peaceful old age after a rich full life is a tragedy, but the rest of the world can not care about it. Literally can not, because it doesn't scale. Those tragedies are happening at a constant rate of many new ones every second of every day at all times. Instead there are a much smaller set of people who care about or who's job is to care about each one, and that set is smaller than "everyone in a 400 mile circle". The fact that a person can drive 200 miles in any direction in a few hours doesn't change that. It's probably a good thing for the system to exist, but if it's used the wrong way, it's entire utility and reason for existing is sabotaged and nullified. However the real point not about the alert system but about a carrier's ability to control your device more than yourself, even if you own your device outright, that I do not say is a good thing that it exists. I accept that there's not much to do about it. I do have a rooted phone running LineageOS, which gives me a bit more control, but I don't kid myself that that really means much. But I don't think it's good or right.
95014_refugee 4y ago
Reductio ad absurdum, wouldn't it be better just to have everyone's phone explode? Chances are pretty good the (alleged) killer will have one on them, so let's just blow everyone up. If you don't, we'll end up with a murdered child, so why not?
- burkaman 4y ago
  Reductio ad absurdum, why not make all communication illegal without the explicit written consent of the recipient? Then you'll never have to be bothered by anyone ever again.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Is that supposed to be an absurd proposition? Because that is something I want. Stuff like advertising should be straight up banned, and it should be considered abuse to get a phone call from someone you have not explicitly whitelisted, especially corporations and governments. No one should presume they have an IRQ line to your brain and attention. They don't get to interrupt you with bullshit you couldn't care less about.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      Ok, what about an air raid siren? Someone speaking to you on the subway? A letter from the government about an upcoming election? A road sign warning of closures? Someone with a megaphone directing traffic?
      - brainchild-adam 4y ago
        I'd argue it's about the level of intrusion and your options in dealing with it. My phone blaring at me at any time w/o warning and with no way to control this behavior seems quite a bit more intrusive to me than your examples.
placatedmayhem 4y ago
There are significant questions about the efficacy of AMBER Alerts, which is concerning given the massive disruption and potential for negative conditioning for other government-originated alerts (severe weather, terrorism, etc.). Here's one paper from 2014 that analyzes AMBER Alert cases compared to those without an alert: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.1003577 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0735648X.2014.10...
burkaman 4y ago
Just want to go against the grain and say that I agree with you and disagree with fellow commenters comparing their phone buzzing once in a while to unwarranted police raids or government-sponsored mass murder.
- izacus 4y ago
  The phone "buzzing once in a while" teaches everyone to ignore this buzzing and makes this massively counter productive - people will ignore it when serious disaster happens.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    I guess I just don't believe you, and it will take more than people complaining to convince me. In the situation described in this thread, I cannot imagine everyone in Central Park dismissing this notification without anyone saying "hang on everyone, it says missile instead of amber this time". I have lived in several big cities in the US and have gotten these alerts less than once a month, sometimes with years in between. It is not a scourge on society. I do think you should be able to disable them, but I think that even if explicitly given the option, most people would leave them on.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      If you knew the alert could be about something hundreds of km's away, and that it usually is, it's very likely people would instinctively turn off the very loud alert instinctively. There's a reason why "alert fatigue" exists. And it has been documented in tons of different settings. Too many alerts and warnings are worse than none. Is there any reason to believe the same phenomenon wouldn't happen in this case?
      - burkaman 4y ago
        Yes, because they happen so infrequently and are widely known to only be used for alerts that most people think are actually important, even if they aren't always relevant to every recipient.
eastbound 4y ago
So one child which might have died is the same as nuking NYC? (and 99% it’s custody dispute, no harm done)

sph 4y ago

Do we have Amber Alerts in UK? I never got one, and I'd like to be told if I'm about to get nuked or an asteroid is imminent.

david_allison 4y ago
Emergency alerts (not Amber) are planned in 2023. Apparently there was a test today on some networks. https://www.gov.uk/alerts https://www.gov.uk/alerts

i_am_jl 4y ago

>I can totally understand why Americans would want to silence these. Oh, it gets better. We also, by default, get alerts for severe/extreme weather. Nothing like getting an emergency alert because a tornado touched down on the other side of the state, or a flash-flood warning while you're at home, 300' above the nearest body of water.

jenkstom 4y ago
That's really not at all fair, the NWS has put a lot of effort since the Joplin tornado into localizing warnings as much as possible to the affected area. They may geolocate the warning based on the tower rather than the phone, but that's still a long way away from "across the state". And you maybe should look into it, but flash floods have nothing to do with bodies of water. You could be 1k feet above a lake on the side of a mountain, but that mudslide caused by torrential rain might be a problem for you.
iLemming 4y ago
I live in North Texas, the weather alerts are pretty accurate here. With climate change, tornadoes and hurricanes are being pushed out of their natural places and regular seasons, and it's becoming normal for having a storm coming seemingly out of nowhere. We do appreciate here those alert broadcasts.

uhtred 4y ago

I don't seem to get these alerts since I switched to a de-googled version of android

r00fus 4y ago

On iOS you can opt out of almost all of these. Concerned people can keep them on. Defaults may be an issue here, but it's nowhere near as concerning as government having hooks in the baseband.

bonestamp2 4y ago

There are two different levels of these alerts. The phones allow people to silence Amber Alerts. The higher level is a National Alert, and those cannot be silenced. They shouldn't be sending out Amber Alerts for something a couple hundred miles away, because as you said, that causes people to ignore them. In my area, we only get very localized Amber Alerts, which makes them pretty rare... 1-2 per year.