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Yeah I went in to my settings and considered disabling this. It happened twice, during a conference I was attending.
I didn't turn it off, in the end, but if they keep doing this, a lot of people will, which is the worst thing possible when there's an actual emergency.
ok, I am admittedly very uninformed on this, but this point is brought up in every discussion of emergency alerts:
The lack of advance warning for the alert was criticised by charities and domestic abuse survivors, who said there was little chance to protect those hiding secret phones.
Is there any evidence that this is a thing? Or is this a purely hypothetical point..? How common really is it for victims to hide secret burner phones from a domestic abuser..?
Maybe I'm wrong and it is really common, but I just find that to be such a weak point and an unlikely scenario. I'm sure there are some small number of these, but the framing is often that these should be a primary consideration of the system design and use, when I just can't imagine that they're even very common to begin with. Feels like an appeal to emotion?
It is common for an abuser to take away a victim's phone, shoes, car keys, medication, etc in order to control them and make it difficult for them to leave.
reminder that there is a feedback form so you can tell the gvt your opinion on the emergency alert system: https://surveys.publishing.service.gov.uk/s/5M75HQ/
I don't think that using this is a good idea unless there is a substantial probability that the owner of the phone needs to take action or be personally impacted. A tornado or flood warning, maybe.
Nagging at people to be on good behavior just pisses them off.
I remember during COVID-19 when my county health department (in the US) decided to keep sending sporadic alerts reminding people to social-distance. And used a robocaller to hit landlines with the same message. I was pretty disgusted. If there is a major regulatory change that affects everyone, okay, maybe then. If you're just repeating a message reminding people to social-distance for the fifth time in the hopes that more people will comply, that just makes me think that the alerting system needs to be taken out of your hamds.
EDIT: I'd be more amenable to something like this if it had a low-priority mode that didn't play an audible alarm and pop up over everything, if the phone could be told that it is a low-priority message and could default to just treating it like an ordinary text message, and not play any notification. In the case of this alert and the COVID-19 alerts, there was no immediacy whatsoever as to the message. It would be perfectly fine for someone to see the message the next time they happen to be looking at their phone. And it means that if you're in a meeting room with fifteen people, everyone's phones don't start a cacaphony of warbling. If you're trying to navigate using the GPS system on your phone in your car and trying to figure out a turn, something doesn't pop up and block the navigation app. I still doubt that it would do much good, but it wouldn't be nearly as obnoxious.
I think it depends on volume.
Once or twice a year for arguably not too major things is better than never, because it helps test the system and people won’t get overwhelmed by 1 or 2 alerts a year. Like a fire drill, but maybe slightly more useful since it actually is providing some actual info hopefully.
If they concider firing off more than that, they need to start raising the bar so that they don’t (excepting the emergency action requirement you laid out, obviously if bombs are dropping then regular alerts are justified)
I don't get why it's "all or nothing"...
They can push silent notifications first, have a "reply Y within 24hrs to prevent further notices"
And accomplish the same thing.
There's no reason to jump straight to the loud ass "the sky is falling" notifications that override silent mode.
This is what I'm thinking.
I wouldn't have minded a push notification.
But a freaking klaxon just to tell me not to use a disposable barbecue that I have no intention of buying? Some of us are already of a nervous disposition, we don't need blaring alarms coming out of nowhere to give words of advice. Naff off with that crap. Klaxon warnings should be for if a wildfire has actually reached my street.
I've turned off the warnings because this is how they choose to use it, so well done, uk gov.
This alert fucking pissed me right off. Firstly, how dare they think they have a right to send anything to MY fucking phone, sure, I'm a citizen of your country, that does NOT entitle you to my property (though they are very well trying to stop us having property).
Second, you're alerting me to wildfires that YOU CAUSED, unblocking North Sea drilling, not pushing on for net-zero, continuing to integrate polluting power into our grid, and letting thousands of vehicles sit idle on poorly planned and maintained roads. Why the FUCK do I have to bend over backwards and restrict my activity when you all get to sit around, suck the wealth out of anyone and everything to fund more and more genocide, and rob the Earth of everything it's got? FUCK OFF.
May the wildfires burn strong and bright through your luxury estates and institutions of oppression.
~The "you" in this being the UK Government, not actually you the reader, you're chill :)~
The damn things should be opt in. It's my choice to take the risk of not getting an alert.
Considering most of us are surrounded by people with phones, many of them will go off, and we'll learn about it that way, anyway.
I disagree about it being opt-in. Most people wouldn't bother, making your next point moot.
I think this was probably not the best use of this system but ultimately this system could save many lives if there's genuine risk to life.
It's a mild inconvenience for about 5 seconds, I think people are making a bigger deal out of it than it really is.