People were interested in what it looked like so this is from my phone.
Just put the info IN THE ALERT?
Missouri does the same. I haven’t been able to see Emergency Alerts since quitting Twitter
Nixel’s system is great for SF and up North. I assumed the whole state used it
I turned off alerts for this reason. It’s always a twit or FB link. I don’t have either so I can’t see the info.
OK
Yah, I’ve been yelling loudly about this shit for a decade. Nobody cares, especially not the people in the government who can’t be bothered to use their own websites.
Just a taste of the deepening US oligarchy, as more public services are gutted in the favour of corpo interests.
…and then it wants you to make an account, right? :)
yep! dumb.
Jeez! I had one in MI a few months ago where the image of the abductee was a Bookface link you couldn’t view unless you were signed in. Just ridiculous.
These marketing strategies to get people back on Twitter are getting out of hand!
This kind of crap, and the fact that I can’t force the sounds to respect DND in my country, are why I turned off Amber Alerts on my phone through adb (or “hacking”, to the layperson).
You need to use adb for that? I simply have a setting to disable them.
I have that setting, but it doesn’t work in my country.
For some stupid reason, they’ve decided to send every time of warning message at the “Presidential Level” that’s supposed to be reserved for crazy life or death kind of stuff.
The settings are in my phone, but can’t actually do anything to the messages coming in.
So I disabled the entire system from my phone and downloaded an app that gives me alerts. Now I’m getting weather alerts again. Haven’t had the opportunity to test whether it’ll alert me to emergencies yet, thankfully. But I’ve turned off Amber Alerts in the app.
Canada, where every alert is in the nuclear attack category.
Nailed it. It’s ridiculous. I’ve sent in multiple complaints, and the one time they reply, they sent a generic email back to me addressed to the wrong name.
They’re building alarm fatigue into their population.
(Meanwhile, a spree killer dressed as a cop and actively pulling people over and shooting them to death? Better hope you’re subscribed to the RCMP Twitter page. Smash that Like button if you want to live!)
Ah fuck, that’s annoying. I’m not even sure Amber alerts are a thing in Malaysia, I got one during a business trip to New York years ago that scared the hell out of me since my phone is set to perpetual silent mode with no vibrations, and at like 3 AM it started playing sirens on max volume.
Had it turned off ever since, and only severe threats and storm warnings activated, see those work fine.
This is why governments should use public infrastructure for public services.
Can you imagine a mastodon.whitehouse.gov instance and everyone in the world just defederates with it every time a republican gets inaugerated?
It would be an absolute shithole with almost 0 moderation due to 1a applicability. Defederation would happen regardless of who has gov majority.
Just don’t allow random people to make accounts
I can, but it would still be effective for public announcements because Mastodon does not typically require a login to view on the web, and it provides am RSS feed. Walled garden platforms that won’t show posts to anonymous web visitors are not acceptable for public announcements.
Well, duh!
I wish the federal government had a software team that made open source software that could be used by all the states.
USDS
I think something like code sharing just became a thing in government so I guess it’s closer
Germany is/was trying something kind of like this? I don’t know much about it but here’s a link in case you want to try reading into it a bit more.
Imagine if there was a free and open source self hosted alternative to twitter that federated with other social networks…
I wonder what their downtime would be. I hope they’d host it on rented servers just for that reason
Surely there are plenty of people who could be hired to make that not an issue? The same argument could be used for other government services. In the UK you do a lot of things through gov.uk. we also had a vaccine passport system as well which is arguably more important than a mastodon instance.
What is this ?
in the US you get automated messages that blow up your phone when a child is involved in a crime near you.
I turn mine off.
when a child is involved in a crime near you.
The specifics vary a bit from one state to another but AMBER Alerts are normally reserved for abducted children, usually with some additional requirements like sufficient reason to think the child is in immediate danger of death or injury, and enough of a description of the child and/or the abductor to be able to identify them.
Child bank robbers in your area!
Interesting idea, does it work?
They say it does, but my hypothesis is that most Amber Alerts are custody disputes, and the “abductor” returns the child when their phone receives the Amber Alert.
The rules vary from one state to another, But usually there’s a requirement for there to be evidence that the child is in imminent danger before they can issue an amber alert.
I work in 911 dispatch, we have plenty of custody dispute situations where someone takes off with the kid where we don’t issue an amber alert, that’s saved for times where the person who took them is deep in a mental health crisis, or has made some kind of threats, etc.
Often it is custody or some other kind of domestic situation related, but that applies for most child abductions in general
Barely a day goes by that I don’t get at least one call for some kind of child custody dispute, but I can probably count the amber alerts we’ve issued in my 6 years here (during my shift anyway) one one hand with fingers to spare.
The dumb thing is they can fit quite a bit of text in the alert itself. They don’t need to link to anything to provide the relevant info necessary to spot potential suspects or the description of the child.
Every time I’ve gotten an Amber Alert on my phone, the phone screams the description of the kid & the suspected car & possibly the suspect themselves on top of showing the entire message on the screen. No idea why anywhere would put all of that info onto Twitter only when this system already exists & really grabs your attention.
And no one is gonna bother clicking on that link so they pretty much made it useless
Absolutely.
Now I understand. I was confused about why people were going to Xhitter for Amber alerts. Looks like California is the issue for pointing people there in the Amber alert that goes out to phones.
