Slashdot Mirror
Facebook 'Safety Check' Lets Friends Know You're OK After a Major Disaster
rtoz (2530056) writes Facebook has launched a new Tool called "Safety Check." The Facebook Safety Check tool will notify your friends so that they know you're OK after a major disaster. In times of disaster or crisis, people turn to Facebook to check on loved ones and get updates. "During a major disaster, Safety Check will help you:
Let friends and family know you're safe; Check on others in the affected area; Mark your friends as safe ... When the tool is activated after a natural disaster and if you're in the affected area, you'll receive a Facebook notification asking if you're safe. [Facebook] will determine your location by looking at the city you have listed in your profile, your last location if you've opted in to the Nearby Friends product, and the city where you are using the internet. ... If you're safe, you can select "I'm Safe" and a notification and News Feed story will be generated with your update. Your friends can also mark you as safe." More creepy, or more reassuring?
How fucking hard is that.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
For the audience this is aimed at (which isn't most slashdotters), definitely reassuring. Facebook has a *huge* base of people who just use it to keep in touch with family's lives, and the ability to mark Grandma as okay even if her internet is down is pretty appealing.
Also good for antisocial people, you can avoid being bothered by a flood of people who are just checking up.
What if the disaster is that Facebook is down?
I lived in London in 2005 when the terror attacks happened there, and my morning commute took me through kings cross. That day with the mobile network switched off, it was hard to let people know I was ok, know if my girlfriend was, and many other people I knew took. Sure there was landlines to call direct if you knew where people were, or email as a bit of a broadcast I'm ok, but something like this would have been far better.
my guess is, to limit liability, that you can only choose 'safe'; like you can only choose to 'like' something. having a 'not safe' option opens facebook up to liability if they do not notify authorities of someone that they know is not safe and has the usual privacy implications if they do tell 3rd parties about you. not to forget the flood of activity and rumors that will spread like wildfires in california if the site posts someone as being 'not safe' after a disaster.
Have had family members in NZ earthquake and a few other misc disasters. Facebook was the best way to find out if they were ok.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
ISTM that panicky mothers would *love* this...
Creepy? Who, us?
Rest assured we will not release this data. After all, we don't release or sell any of your other data. Don't be alarmed that the largest human database in the world will start tracking all those infected, sick, or in trouble in some way using this "feature", building a hot-spot map for the CDC and the like (can you say targeted medical ads?).
Don't worry though. Your Obamacare personalized health care plan rates won't go up much. And we won't sell this information to potential employers as a nefarious way to discriminate against those who might abuse medical benefits.
We pinky promise.
Somehow I doubt Facebook is particularly interested in the personal data of the people signing up for this - they already HAVE that, by definition.
No, it's another way to expand their shadow profiles and collect more data on those people who aren't on Facebook, but are friends with (or related to) people that are.
#DeleteChrome
A) still calling B) trying to update a half dozen media sites and C) now facebook is going to auto spam you complete with graphics and ad's
Okay, in my experience with the military every time there was a major disaster somewhere in the world I had to tell my command that I was safe and that I didn't have any immediate family in the affected area. They eventually mostly automated this with a website I could use.
So, at least theoretically facebook could dispense with the graphics and ads and send minimal amounts of data, even stuff like 'respond to this text with your status to auto-update', using a few kilobytes rather than megabytes. Done widely enough this would indeed help lower the strain on communication infrastructures during times of emergency while allowing more people to update their status.
I don't read AC A human right
I actually like the idea - having been on an overnight flight landing on 9/11, I remember quite a few online contacts wanting to check I was OK. Of course, with Facebook a simple status update would have done the trick, no need for any special tool - and if I'd been offline, a friend could probably have posted that on my page on my behalf. (The gap between "can phone a friend" and "can get online" is pretty slim these days, too: much more so now than it was then.)
Or "aaaaaargh".
It might only work if you dictate it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."