Excessive Feed Alerts

[ChrisABQ]

Greetings everyone,

I tried searching for this topic, but was unable to find much on the subject.

The reason I'm asking for forum input, is to get your honest thoughts about excessive amounts of feed alerts by providers. Specifically, the city that I live in (Albuquerque, NM) has just switched over to a new P25 radio system for police/sheriff and city/county fire rescue. So far, they have been kind enough to keep their main dispatch channels open and clear, but much of the system is encrypted. Like any other city, there are many incidents that take place daily. The concern that I have is that a provider is alerting to normal city incidents (sometimes as many as 4 alerts a DAY) that do not fall within "Major Incident" parameters. As some of these incidents would be considered major in rural areas (i.e. shootings, foot chases or traffic accidents) in cities these incidents happen daily. As this feed, typically only draws on average 20 or less listeners during the day, I believe they are trying to increase listener numbers for the sake of increasing numbers.

The concern that I have is that, as alerts are sitewide and national (or beyond), this provider is creating a negative image of the city that may make agencies fully encrypt.

So with that, should there be restrictions regarding alerting on Broadcastify and should this be a TOS abuse violation?

 

[1808208]

I myself never use the alerting system... and it wouldn't hurt my feelings to have it restricted or taken away completely.
In my area, Facebook groups spread the word on what's happening. My listener count will go up on its own without my help.

I don't see a real benefit to inflating the listener count... but I suppose some people might do it.

 

[Reconrider]

I’ve only ever used the alerts for kidnapping or lost older people/amber alerts. Don’t see any reason for using it to let people know a foot chase is happening.
I could see it leaving wouldn’t hurt me

 

[Spitfire8520]

Once upon a time, in the long ago, the stated standard was "for the type of incidents that would make it to CNN." That standard had been largely ignored since the beginning and has just settled on anything that might cause a passerby to tweet about it.

I ignore feed alerts and use listener counts as a more reliable way of finding major happenings. I often forget the feature even exists for providers when something does happen on my feed as a result. Maybe I should start using it more to hit those incentive thresholds?