Netflix and Spotify could one day send you emergency alerts

A new bill could interrupt your binge marathon of The Crown with emergency alerts.

Per Gizmodo, the bipartisan-backed Reliable Emergency Alert Distribution Improvement (READI) Act was reintroduced to the U.S. Senate by Brian Schatz (D-HI) and John Thune (R-SD) in hopes of overhauling the federal emergency alert system, including bringing those alerts to streaming services.

The alerts are already approved for broadcast via traditional television and radio, but streaming services are now commanding more and more of our attention. So Schatz and Thune want to make sure that platforms like Netflix and Spotify have to broadcast the alerts, too.

They also want to do away with any opt-out options on "certain federal alerts, including missile alerts, on mobile phones" and require alerts issued by the president or FEMA to be repeated. Right now, alerts are only required to be played once.

The bill was originally proposed by Schatz and Thune in July 2018, months after the infamous January 2018 false alarm that caused a panic in Schatz's home state of Hawaii. Unsurprisingly, the bill also lays out an overhaul of the system to better handle future false alarms and, hopefully, prevent them altogether.

It's also worth noting that Schatz also introduced a bill "to improve oversight by the Federal Communications Commission of the wireless and broadcast emergency alert systems." It's not clear what this bill entails or if it would compliment the READI Act. (UPDATE: A spokesperson Sen. Schatz tells me this was actually the reintroduction of the READI Act.)

We also reached out to Netlfix and Spotify for comment since they were directly mentioned by Schatz in his press release about the READI Act.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, the entire FEMA alert system underwent an overhaul in 2018 that now allows direct communication between the president and the nation in case of an emergency, like a natural disaster or terrorist attack.

There was, naturally, some concern at the time about giving a president as, uh, temperamental as Donald Trump the ability to send alerts. But there are safeguards in place to presumably prevent any kind of abuse of the system, including layers of approval before any message is directly sent.

Of course, given the state of things in America right now, there's little that can probably bring comfort to a large portion of the country, including emergency alerts interrupting their Spotify jam sessions. But here we are.

UPDATE: Oct. 25, 2019, 12:26 p.m. EDT Updated to confirm new bill was actually the READI Act