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Facebook Makes Safety Check a Permanent Feature (techcrunch.com)
Facebook announced today that its "Safety Check" feature will be permanent in its app and on the desktop. The feature lets you check to see whether friends and family are safe following a crisis. TechCrunch reports: The change comes following new terrorist attacks, including one in Barcelona, where a vehicle was driven into a crowd, as well as the attack in Charlottesville, here in the U.S. According to Facebook, the dedicated button is gradually rolling out to users starting today, and will complete over the upcoming weeks. That means you may not see the option right away, but likely will soon. When Safety Check is accessed by way of the new button, you'll be able to view a feed of disasters, updates from friends who marked themselves as safe and offers of help. An "around the world" section will display where Safety Check has been recently enabled, too.
... but fear itself.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'm not saying it's time to round up the muslims and put them in camps for our safety, but surely it's time to ask the question.
After an atrocity it's always reassuring to know that celebrities like P Diddy, Nicholas Cage, Madonna etc. are safe and unharmed. Even if they're nowhere near the attack, possibly in a different country or even on a private island somewhere.
I like how Facebook has decided that the car incident in Charlottesville, where a driver's car is swarmed with protestors with bats who bash the car and smash the windows and THEN the driver accelerates is a "terrorist attack".
When an islamic driver plowed into a crowd at a street carnival and kept going and did it again and kept going and did it again and kept going and did it again... Facebook told us we had to wait and not rush to judgement and, even then, that wasn't a sign of terrorism but just a domestic incident.
I'm glad they're making this a permanent feature but can't help but wonder if Facebook now gets to determine what's a valid "disaster".
Who watches the watchers?
Wow. I had no idea just how deeply social media's infection had reached into people's lives. People carry around "disaster alerts" in their pockets now? They expect their friends and family to actively mark themselves as "safe"? I can't fathom what it must be like to live such a life of fear.
Gosh. Just losely following the news "about" Facebook is "a feed of disasters" in itself.
I am really glad I can get by without a Facebook account, and those friends of mine "on" facebook are nice enough to put up with an occassional e-mail or (gasp!) real-life meeting (yes sometimes even with a hug!).
I keep hoping Facebook goes the way of Geocities, leaving behind a couple of disappointed investors and a burst bubble.
Top 25 causes of death:
25: Cold
24: Heat
23: Fall from building
22: Gun accidental discharge
21: Air accident
20: Machinary
19: Choking on food
18: Fall from furniture
17: Bicycle accident
16: Off road vehicle
15: Problems during surgury
14: Fire/smoke
13: Drowning
12: Motorcycle
11: Pedestrian accident
10: Shot by firearm
9: Drugs
8: Car accident
7: All types of falls aggregated together
6: Accidental poisoning
5: Self harm
4: All types of vehicle accidents aggregated together
3: Stroke
2: Cancer
1: Heart disease
So which of these top 25 causes of death, does Facebook cover? I'm guessing none?
(1 in 5 people get cancer and 1 in 7 people die from it. No-one is immune, Republican law makers who want to raise healthcare insurance prices, 5 fold for older people, and make cancer cover optional.)
But don't you dare say anything bad about the people doing it.
3,000 years ago, Confucius wrote, 'Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.' The Golden Rule. Spirituality is about overcoming our base monkey instincts that wants us to grab everything we can at the expense of others in our troop and being the alpha. It's about being compassionate towards others.
All of the Abrahamic religions teach compassion at their core but it's funny that it's hardly ever practiced. Religion is about 'my beliefs are the Right way and you must convert otherwise you go to Hell' or some other such nonsense. It's about ego - feeling superior to those who don't know the "true" path. And those who don't believe the way you do are to be subjugated or destroyed - physically, socially, economically or politically or all the above.
Spirituality will make the world a better place.
Religion is evil and is leading to the World's destruction.
/:
"where a vehicle was driven into a crowd"
Swedish media:
"a vehicle drove through a crowd."
Or vehicles don't have drivers. They are simply vehicles driving over people. (and only racists think it's terrorists attacks committed by Muslims and even if they are it haven't got anything to do with Islam. And that only make sense, because where in the Quran and Hadiths may you find any example whatsoever of hatred of non-Muslims, orders to fight enemies of Islam and capital punishment for breaking its laws?!)
> I'm not saying it's time to round up the muslims and put them in camps for our safety [...]
Just sayin' -- or what. And what question do you want to ask?
Yeah. Rounding up $PEOPLE and putting them in camps. This is a good idea which has never been tried in history.
Asshole.
Some day Facebook will fade away just like Friendster, AOL, and MySpace. Twitter is already in the downward spiral...
what we need is Home Simpsons Everything's OK alarm. It continuously sounds a loud annoying alarm unless something isn't ok
The feature made perfect sense when it was first used for large-scale disaster, e.g. tsunamis affecting the majority of people in a given area. Nowadays, I'm flooded with alerts about some guy who ran around with a knife, as if there's any chance that the people I know in the same city were affected.
Now that they're making it permanent, maybe they'll finally implement a setting to turn the whole thing off.
Just like the terror alert level that was being shoved down our throats - another tool to justify regime change operations through fear.
Any fucker who says "You completely failed to get the point" is probably replying to someone who actually made a really good point, and maybe even pointed out the emperor's new clothes.
I'm not too convinced this will be useful, especially for casual facebook users. that are actually safe during a crisis but fail to mark themselves as "safe" with this feature. Say there is a crisis in your location, and you're using this to see who's OK in your friend list. 75/100 friends are safe. Phew. What about the other 25? Or even if it's only 8/10 that you really care about. Are they dead because they didn't check in? Or maybe they just forgot their phone that day. As this feature becomes more ubiquitous on facebook, it will increase the worry factor for those not on facebook enough to use it via "false negatives".
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
I don't do Facebook. That's even safer.