We're most likely to care about what is/feels closer to us, what we can relate to, what we know. You'd feel more if your neighbour whom you greet every day on the foyer died in a car crash that if it were a random person you didn't know at all, right? It's the same principle.

I also think that there is not just empathy at play, but fear. Because the closer an event is to us or the people we know/relate to, the more we realise it could also happen to us.

Sad that you get downvoted for telling the truth, even if it's an uncomfortable truth. Upvoted to compensate.

Maybe it just needs to be said with some humour

https://youtu.be/QKboodmEHTQ?t=4m24s

And it's not only Facebook.

These Brussels attacks have wall-to-wall coverage on all news stations, including local ones, unlike the Turkish blasts which were covered much less and only by the major outlets.

Maybe it is because such blasts are more common in country which wages a civil war against a part of his inhabitants.

Belgium can be looked at this way too.

Belgium wages war against ISIS as a part of NATO, and ISIS includes some Belgian citizens, so they wage war against them. It's just they are further away than Kurds. But as we can see, explosion-wise, this makes small difference.

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> And it's not only Facebook.

It goes without saying. My statement was meant to be general.

Surprising how first-world people don't even know who s in the first world (this includes the majority of your responders, sadly).

So what? FB also exists in non 1st world countries in case you didn't noticed.

You may ignore it since you don't know anyone there, but people from there would appreciate knowing their friends and relatives are safe.

Still, like it was already told, FB did activate the feature also in the Ankara bombings and other occasions for Turkey, there is nothing racist here going on.

People in third world nations don't have any empathy super powers for people who are ethnically, religiously, or socio-economically from themselves either.