Slashdot Mirror
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.
One more every-day feature designed to heighten people's fear of something statistically very unlike to happen to them. I look forward to it being extended to an feature where every time you log in, it automatically messages all your Facebook 'friends' that you haven't been struck by a bus, fallen in a lake, choked on your sandwich or 101 other possible ways someone, somewhere may have died recently.
Hang on, it's been a full 10 minutes since I reassured everyone on Facebook I'm still living, and I hear someone fell off their bike in Australia. They need to know it wasn't me. Be right back....
Stay safe everyone. I worry about you and it's be a while.
You completely failed to get the point. Facebook is a primary method of mass communication for many, as is twitter. Much of the news of the day now happens on these networks first. With everyone being a producer of the content it also makes it the most easy to get word out about people's status.
We're not living lives of fear, we're living lives of anxiety. We always have. You may not remember the bombings in Manchester in 1996. I do. I had a lump in my throat for about 10 hours while I was wondering if my cousin who worked in the area was still alive before a family member finally managed to get him on the phone.
Compared to that last week while we were at work when news broke of the Barcelona attack we all wondered if one of our colleagues was okay. Not 10min passed before her Facebook status was marked as "safe" even though she was on Las Ramblas at the time of the attack.
Thinking that this is a bad feature doesn't show the world is afraid, it shows you lack empathy.