Facebook Makes Safety Check a Permanent Feature (techcrunch.com) 109
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.
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Re:We have nothing to fear (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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One of mine was at Las Rambals on the day of the attack. When I heard the news my heart sank and a whole 30 seconds later when I checked on facebook and saw "marked herself safe" the moment was over.
Did you ever think that she was fine all along, and there was no crisis, and that you have been conditioned by the media to freak out? Why did your heart sink? You really, honestly, and truly thought that your friend had been killed? Yeah, no. That's what terror attacks are supposed to cause. You're helpi
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Jesus Christ, you're full of shit. Yes, those of us who leave our parents' basements from time to time have people that we care about. When those people are in the vicinity of violence or natural disaster, we worry about them. We can't all be autistic robots concerned only with the collection of waifu dolls donning our Cheeto-encrusted desks.
Or maybe he understands something. Once this feature is established, and people are addicted, imagine what is going to happen. Let's take a relatively benign disaster, a big blizzard that knocks down power lines over a large area. Your loved one can't check into Facebook because their cell phone towers have lost power, and the emergency batteries have gone flat. So while they may be perfectly safe, maybe a little chilly, but blankets and candles might just make for a fun evening with their SO, if you know w
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Did you ever think that she was fine all along, and there was no crisis, and that you have been conditioned by the media to freak out? Why did your heart sink? You really, honestly, and truly thought that your friend had been killed?
This. Humans, especially the less intelligent ones, are only capable of thinking in a tribal fashion. They hear news from around the world, but they think of it as if it's local. That way a little girl who is kidnapped is mentally processed as Suzy frmo next door, or any other disaster is just like it happened in their own town. I don't specifically blame the media, but human tribalism, aided by safety culture's fear of everything.
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Well, I do specifically blame the media. They are instilling a culture of fear. Have you watched your local news lately? Nothing but violence and death, with a happy story thrown in once a week.
Would you have them be forbidden to report anything you don't want?
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Would you have them be forbidden to report anything you don't want?
There's a huge gap between "X is doing something wrong" and "there oughta be a law". You bridged it, but not everyone thinks that way.
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Would you have them be forbidden to report anything you don't want?
There's a huge gap between "X is doing something wrong" and "there oughta be a law". You bridged it, but not everyone thinks that way.
The issue with news is that it is impossible to be completely unbiased. There is so much news in the world, and reportage is time limited, so the mere act of picking what to post news about indicates whatever bias there might be.
So somoeone gets tired of say, The former President's birth certificate news, and another is pissed that they keep reporting on something the current one does, and somoene else is angry that new stories violence on blacks is reported, and another is pissed because they are putting
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One more every-day feature designed to heighten people's fear of something statistically very unlike to happen to them
Oh get over yourself. This doesn't make anyone scared, and it's not just for terrorist attacks.
Uh huh. Go without your phone for a week. I've watched especially young people blanch and panic when that last bar of their phone disappears while travelling. Even had one try to get me to change routes, because "What if someone in my family is hurt or dies while I am out of cell service?"
The problem with safety culture and it's effects is that the safer we are, the less safe we feel. After one of my sisters moved to Florida, my other sister would fly into a panic any time there was a weather alert for Fl
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One more every-day feature designed to heighten people's fear of something statistically very unlike to happen to them
Oh get over yourself. This doesn't make anyone scared, and it's not just for terrorist attacks.
Uh huh. Go without your phone for a week. I've watched especially young people blanch and panic when that last bar of their phone disappears while travelling. Even had one try to get me to change routes, because "What if someone in my family is hurt or dies while I am out of cell service?"
They got that out past the duct tape?
Silly person, Duct tape is for amateurs. Pros superglue their lips shut.
Re: We have nothing to fear (Score:2)
Easy. 17 words. First word... sounds like...
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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...
That's exactly the way some people already use the Facebook, constantly posting up to the minute, mundane little details about their special little lives.
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One more every-day feature designed to heighten people's fear of something statistically very unlike to happen to them.
I know people who live in, or are visiting, all sorts of places around the world, and I'm not alone in this. I suspect that this feature might actually help cut the paranoia.
Next time some arsehole does something violent in Rome or Melbourne or wherever, it's good to be reminded that the vast majority of people there are largely unaffected. Perhaps a little inconvenienced if they happen to be in the middle of the city, but otherwise perfectly fine.
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Redneck killed one person. Muslims do this shit all the time, yet the media says we should fear the rednecks. Laughable.
You need to learn more about the history of "rednecks" - and the ones who wear blue uniforms
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Redneck killed one person. Muslims do this shit all the time, yet the media says we should fear the rednecks. Laughable.
You need to learn more about the history of "rednecks" - and the ones who wear blue uniforms
I'm fine with removing those who wear the blue uniforms from all places that don't want them.
COMPLETELY removing them.
Why don't you try selling that to your neighbors?
Several places I've lived have tried but been voted down. Police *forces* aren't the only way to keep the *peace*
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Redneck killed one person. Muslims do this shit all the time, yet the media says we should fear the rednecks. Laughable.
"Redneck" drove a car through a crowd, killing 1 but injuring 19.
Could have been much worse.
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Redneck killed one person. Muslims do this shit all the time, yet the media says we should fear the rednecks. Laughable.
The people who lost family to Dylann Roof still aren't laughing. Was he a Muslim?
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Redneck killed one person. Muslims do this shit all the time, yet the media says we should fear the rednecks. Laughable.
The people who lost family to Dylann Roof still aren't laughing. Was he a Muslim?
The people who lost family to Mohammed Atta aren't laughing, either, and there are a LOT more of those. Yeah, he's a Muslim.
The people who last family to Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik aren't laughing, either, and there are more of those. Yeah, they're both Muslim.
The people who lost family to Omar Mateen aren't laughing, either, and there are more of those. You guessed it, he's a Muslim.
The people who lost family to Khalid Masood aren't laughing, either. Yep, ANOTHER Muslim.
The people who lost family to
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If the West had never interfered with the Muslim world, we would not have these problems. Like Europeans in America, we were the invaders.
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Yes, but use them intelligently. Just dropping them somewhere isn't going to accomplish anything.
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No it's not. A very small group misrepresenting a religion does not mean you go rounding up everyone of that religion. Do you want to round up all Christians because of the KKK or Neo-nazis? Or some of the contemporary Christian terrorism [wikipedia.org] groups?
It's people like you that should be rounded up because you help spread the hatred and give these groups another justification for their fight. They point at you and say that all Westerners hate Muslims. And when you make statements like that you make the Muslims tha
Re: May as well call it "Muslim Check" (Score:1)
Wrong. Muslims declared war on the rest of the world centuries ago.
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Why should they be distinct from other religions in that sense? Especially the Abrahamic religions, such as Christianity and Judaism, where righteous genocide is key to the oldest stories? I'm specifically mentioning the willingness of Abraham to slaughter his son for his god, the world flood of Noah, the slaughter of Jewish infants by the Egyptians and the slaughter of every first-born Egyptian child by the Jewish god, the slaughter of the Canaanites by Jews upon reaching the "Promised Land". It goes on to
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Hey, the justification is even older than that, given the age of the holy scriptures they draw their justification from, a mere millennium is kinda recent.
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Pretty much any religion contains some sort of justification for Lebensraum. Our people need more room, and the heathens have it, so club their heads in. Deus vult!
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'Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.'
A dangerous proposition in a world that is obviously full of masochists.
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Yes, and in the end it was rightfully called "The Sick man of Europe [wikipedia.org]. With the only debatable portion thereof being the "Europe" but certainly not the sick part. It was a shadow of its former self. It had nothing of the vitality and threat that it was to Europe a mere 300 years earlier when it conquered half of Europe before being stopped by the Polish king at the gates of Vienna.
A service Austria repaid about a 100 years later by dividing up what was left of Poland between it, Prussia and Russia, but let's
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Yes, this was the important part of the posting. Good job. It's up there with pointing out a missing apostrophe.
The reach of social media (Score:4)
Re:The reach of social media (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I do empathise. I feel sadness that you and your "we" are living lives of anxiety.
You not having anxiety when a friend / family member is known to be in the mediate vicinity of a terrorist attack shows that you do in fact not empathise at all.
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Considering the odds of being in a terrorist attack are incredibly low, and yet you apparently know two people who were in them or nearby. I call bullshit.
Also - you can just as easily message people without using Facebook. FB is just a way for people to blast out messages without having to actually talk to anyone personally. It's nearly as dehumanizing as the terrorists who tried to bomb your fake cousin and coworker.
Which is more efficient: calling everyone you know to let them know you're ok (or at least key people who can spread the word) or do a single post on social media? This feature is to lessen the cell network traffic so people won't get a network not available type message while calling 911.
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Considering the odds of being in a terrorist attack are incredibly low, and yet you apparently know two people who were in them or nearby. I call bullshit.
Nearby is not just spatially but also temporal.
Two? I actually know about 5. Another colleague of mine was in Brussels in a cafe opposite the train station which was bombed. A good friend of mine was at a Christmas market in Berlin on the 18th (one day out, and a market 2km away, but since I didn't know the exact details at the time it becomes irrelevant). I myself was contacted by my family while I was in Paris due to the "terrorist attack" at Place d'Italie. Turns out it wasn't an attack, just an electric
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You're just playing idiotic semantic games by trying to substitute "anxiety" for "fear" and trying to pretend the latter is different while demonstrating that you treat them as equivalent.
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You're just playing idiotic semantic games by trying to substitute "anxiety" for "fear" and trying to pretend the latter is different while demonstrating that you treat them as equivalent.
No. "Fear" in the context of terrorism has a very specific meaning. The fear of the terrorist. The fear to the personal self.
Anxiety due to not knowing status of someone is not a fear. I don't* fear that someone may be dead, but I'm anxious to know if they are alive. Calling it semantics is just a failure of understanding of language.
*unless they own me lots of money. :-)
Except for something large scale
Interesting qualification given that this is generally what the feature has been used for.
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No. This feature's use hasn't been limited to large scale disasters - it's mostly used for very small scale and localized things (such as Charlottesville or various shootings).
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You don't think that it's common to make a Facebook post to let everyone who cares about you know that you're alright if you've been in the vicinity of some sort of disaster? You might call your partner & close relatives, but Facebook has replaced email lists and such. Of course by disaster I mean more like the 2004 Indonesian earthquake (280,000 dead) than ten people dead in a million plus city. That's really the crazy part here, it puts Facebook in charge of what's a disaster.
And it creates a form of
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I don't know if it's common, I do not use Facebook. I wouldn't use an email list to tell anyone about my safeness if I was in the vicinity of an accident. My friends and family don't tend to be aware of my daily whereabouts so why would they have any reason to worry about me if something happened somewhere?
You make an interesting point about Facebook deciding how to classify a disaster - but then I suppose, differing countries, states etc. probably all have their own criteria, as well as individuals. In our
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As someone who comes from a country that has a history of terror attacks, I can tell you that calling someone to make sure they were not hurt is not something new. People have been doing this here (both calling to say they're safe and calling to check if others are safe) before we even had internet.
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Scaremongering is also a great diversionary tactic.
The "war on terrr" saved how many lives?
How many lives would a war on tobacco producers–significant contributors to the top three causes of death–have saved?
The difference of Swedish media and other media (Score:1)
/:
"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?!)
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Great! (Score:2)
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.
More hysteria than reassurance for casual users (Score:2)
HA HA HA! (Score:1)