Alerts are sent as a special type of message on devices and are then saved as SMS afterwards. Depending on your device you can actually adjust these settings, but not everyone does, so they're left on defaults. They're designed to all be under the same type of category it seems, but they really shouldn't be. That being said however, some devices, such as my aforementioned S7, needed a software update for that to work properly. Not everyone updated their phones so it could also have been just a fallback. As for DND mode, there's probably settings to change that, but since not everyone did change that, they're just getting the default behavior that the alert was sent out with, hence the bypass.
Hmmmm I had thought that part about the software updates and the alert mode would have been solved long ago, since this kind of announcement system does is something companies do "take well" to be put under pressure for: it's a little bit of good marketing basically for free.
That said, a good point that it does rely on people actually learning how to use their freakin' phones - and on manufacturers allowing users to preserve enough control of them. So long as those two things don't mix well, people are not only going to complain but yeah
they are going to complain to the wrong entity >_>
I'm sorry you didn't get your beauty sleep, want the body of the girl that was involved in this incident as an apology for you losing a few minutes of rest?
That's honestly rather ridiculous, not to mention uncalled for. I have 6 PM for "beauty sleep"; 6 AM is for my recovery sleep, that's why I'd have DND on - or just power off the phone, but I presume a manufacturer or a system that can bypass DND can also hack into the antenna/battery and WoL-poweron the phone too. As for the body of the girl, half the point of limiting the alerts to the people who can actually inflect agency on the issue (be it by launching themselves into a superspy game on the streets, into a witchhunt or just sharing pictures of the alleged car on Twitter) is to avoid inducing either undue stress or a desensitization ("I thought I was going to lose my life but eh, it's just some thing that other people more qualified are working on already, and between shower and breakfast this is probably going to be over already") (unfortunately, it was).
Basically, I would have no problem if this was functioning properly; the issue is as a system that is supposed to
announce emergencies and give people time to counter them, it can't afford to misbehave into just like internet ads: the more amber alerts I get on my phone that don't give me agency, the less likely I'll eventually be going to pay attention to the system. I probably am not going to even notice the effect - it's just how we as a society have wired people to work since before portable phones are a thing.
Trev said:
Plus, hearing them makes me think there's a serious emergency that's about to end my life, and I don't recover well from that kind of stress.
Incineroar said:
My take? Be thankful that system woke you up, even if it inconveniences you. If it were a tornado or a chemical attack or a bomb threatnor something that had occurred instead, you could be dead instead of sleeping.
See, that is why see my point on not using the system to mis-train people. Plus, we shouldn't all have to be People's Soldiers and go on the hunt - we have (in countries like that) an actual Army that can be Deployed for that.
This accident revealed another such issue: in theory the system would be able, if imposed on the manufacturers, to wake up people even if they have their phones powered off, too, but we still need to 1.- make sure the manufacturers do that right and 2.- that people can be informed and choose. If they fix those issues that you mentioned and they refine the system to better match the kind of emergency that people "*have*" to join to, all the more power to them.
EnglishALT said:
That is a really good point, how many people are going to recognize a certain year's model of car, maybe it would be better if the police sent out a generic picture of what that year's car model, color, and license plate looks like. I mean it isn't like it's 2003 anymore they can send pictures through texts.
This is a good point that I hadn't really thought of and one reason why I am a bit taken back on how or where exactly did all this technology present this particular failure case when almost all it relies on is well-connected and known to work correctly (everything from identifying cell phones attached to towers to geomatching third-party coverage zones with police activity reports to attaching a picture to a message was solved before the 90s).
A case could also be made that by sending generic car pictures or car information the LEOs are going to be inducing people to go into the streets and report on any and whatever "undesirable" they happen to see that slightly matches the description? Inducing fear in a society that already looks at the world through hate... has not proven to give the best results, and if anything it'd lead to lots of distracting reports that the police would have to chase (instead of just focusing on the work of their investigators, who are supposedly trained and have better access to the case info to deal with all this).
