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.
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)
Ignoring whether or not this alert was appropriate or not, the government sends out test alerts periodically to both test the system and for people to know their device works. They announce it in advance for a specific time so you can expect it and not panic, plus if you didn’t get it you’d know you have an issue on your side.
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)
Ignoring whether or not this alert was appropriate or not, the government sends out test alerts periodically to both test the system and for people to know their device works. They announce it in advance for a specific time so you can expect it and not panic, plus if you didn’t get it you’d know you have an issue on your side.