emergency alerts
in canada all alerts use the presidential alert category, meaning they often can't be silenced at all (though somehow my phone lets me) and they can't be filtered for category.
re: emergency alerts
and where i live, amber alerts are by far the most common. every time there's any sort of parental dispute the it seems OPP LOVES to send out an alert for it... if there's an actual danger though, like a shooter or dangerous weather? the OPP seems to be "oopsie I forgot how to use emergency alerts"... i've only ever gotten test and amber alerts, even in situations that would warrant an alert. the amber alerts usually seem to be for the entire province too? so if a kid in ottawa goes missing i'll get an alert for it... yeah sure i'll be on the lookout.
re: emergency alerts
i think there was one time where they sent out an alert and it turned out the wrong parent picked up the kids by accident. like they were found safe at their house 5 minutes later. does that really need an alert?
and do they need to be presidential alerts? i know we don't even have one of those...
re: emergency alerts
it also causes fatigue, people start ignoring the alerts...
re: emergency alerts
@onfy amber alerts are such a weird thing, I wonder how useful they really are, and waking someone up with them isn't really helpful because what, am I gonna find the missing child in my dreams?
here in Germany I have an app where I can subscribe to stuff like flood and storm warnings and for really important stuff they also use cell broadcast, that seems much less like a feature people will want to turn off (so far I've only gotten test alerts)
re: emergency alerts
@onfy scholars seem to have determined that it only helps in relatively mundane cases and is mostly "crime control theater" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert#Crime_control_theater
re: emergency alerts
@noiob yeah
re: emergency alerts
@noiob some people apparently have been found thanks to them so eh...?