The tech giant claims millions of people were sent a warning before the deadly earthquake earlier this year.
  • Derin@lemmy.beru.coEnglish
    221·
    1 year ago

    I live in Turkey and know numerous folks who were in the quake, or had family members in the quake. No one got any sort of alert.

    Weird flex, Google.

    Edit: To make things clear, I’m not implying that Google had any responsibility to anyone as far as Earthquake reporting is concerned; I simply find it odd they would insist that "no no no the system totally worked’ when it clearly didn’t. A lot of people died, maybe don’t use this specific incident to make your point?

      • nik282000@lemmy.ml
        2·
        1 year ago

        It’s nice that an ad company lets us know when we might accidentally die but, yeah, not a first line of defense. Local government should be beating commercial sources to the punch every time vital information needs to go out.

    • startlefrenzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      I hope everyone you know is doing okay but I don’t think Google is really flexing that the alert system didn’t work. Tech isn’t perfect but the system has worked with other earthquakes. If anything we can hope the tech gets better because this event will highlight gaps.

      • Derin@lemmy.beru.coEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        Google’s product lead on the system, Micah Berman, insisted it had worked. “We are confident that this system fired and sent alerts,” he told the BBC. However, the company did not provide evidence that these alerts were widely received.

        Personally I don’t think they have any responsibility to build such a system, or even have it function properly. By “weird flex” I was specifically referring to the “We are confident that this system fired and sent alerts” line.

        Obviously my view is anecdotal (especially the whole “No one got any sort of alert” part of my original comment), so take what I say with a grain of salt!

    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      I think if you create an alarm service like this, you do have a certain responsibility, because people will start to rely on that.

      • nik282000@lemmy.ml
        11·
        1 year ago

        Nah. Relying on an ad subsidized service to alert you of danger is a bad idea both for the end user and the local government.

        There is a already an emergency alert system baked into every iPhone and Android device, the government is responsible for using it regardless of whether there is commercial service working in parallel to theirs.

  • schizosfera@feddit.de
    1·
    1 year ago

    Probably a very stupid question: Could Turkey’s Internet censorship (like DNS blocking) have any effect on the alert system?