Is that reasonable or proportionate? Does it actually provide useful information? Is it likely to quell unfounded fears and provide genuine reassurance?
As tragic as this incident was, it affected a single building. Safety Check might be a useful feature in some very specific circumstances, but it's abundantly clear that Facebook is using it inappropriately. People hundreds of miles from the incident are having their profiles show "not marked as safe".
The article makes a quite reasonable point - that Safety Check strongly implies that "not safe" is the default, contrary to long-established social norms. Unless used very carefully, this feature could cause completely unnecessary fear; it is easy to envision a scenario where Safety Check could prompt a dangerous mass panic.
If this is a genuine public safety feature, if Facebook really are using Safety Check out of concern for their users welfare, then they should fully accept the concomitant responsibility. They should expend real resources to liaise with the relevant agencies and ensure that Safety Check is deployed only when appropriate, that it is accurately targeted and that it helps rather than hinders relief efforts.
If Facebook wish to rely on their usual excuses of "move fast and break stuff" and "it's not our fault, it's the algorithm", then we should see Safety Check in those terms - as a careless and cynical effort to boost engagement metrics.
100% agree. I think it's a well-intentioned effort gone wrong because the tuning is so off. I know a few engineers at Facebook who work on algorithms + related tooling, I'll make sure they see this.
I live in London but have friends around the world that haven't visited me yet and don't know where I live. After an event like yesterday I get a lot of messages asking if I'm ok, so using the safety check can help even though there was no remote risk that I could've been affected.
I think it's reasonable that the safety check area is that large, it helps for friends/family who don't know exactly where you are.
This looks like yet another case of nerds assuming the entire world thinks and acts like we do. Yes, worrying about someone just because they live in the same major city as a disaster that affects a couple hundred people is irrational. Yes, your adds of being killed by a bus while crossing the street are far greater. Yes, just about any event which makes the news is unlikely by definition. No, none of this actually influences how normal people think and act.
If my friend is going overseas for a month (and there aren't any terror attacks or plane crashes or whatever), I will probably assume they're doing just fine, haven't been mugged or gotten lost in the woods or anything unless I specifically hear otherwise.
I probably wasn't involved, and they'd have heard if I was.
Well that's bloody stupid and innumerate of them. Surely, enabling such vices can't be good in the long-term.
... and how, again, are these people able to acquire positions of power such that we still have to care-about/interact-with them?
Stop arguing about why the average person, or even the average powerful person, ought to have an excellent understanding of these things, and start exploring why they don't. You'll come out of it more informed.
I'm not in any way convinced that Safety Check does actually dampen fear. It provides information of very poor quality ("not marked as safe" or "safe") in a very poorly targeted way, without any kind of meaningful context. That kind of uncertainty is rarely reassuring.
If Facebook took the issue seriously, they could easily address many of these shortcomings. They could provide this kind of information in a relevant and contextual way, counteracting the cognitive biases that lead us to worry. They could deeply examine how social media can stoke fears and engineer reassurance into the fabric of their network, rather than bolting on a crude alert system that was hacked together in a weekend. I doubt that they will, because fear and misinformation is clearly very profitable for them in all sorts of ways.
I'm reminded of the AMBER Alert system - a well-meaning but highly ineffectual response that has greatly contributed to the climate of fear.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0887403407302332 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734016808316778
Clearly there's a geographic component. Someone in the area, around the time, or in the area regularly. There's probably a fancy combination of, how bad the event was, how widely the event was reported, how close you are to friends, are you traveling to the area, and a bunch of other factors.
Clearly they can handle it dynamically. If you get the "are you ok?" messages, they can add you to likely events, and offer the i'm safe. They can make it easy to add yourself to a disaster event.
There are a lot of people in London. They have the social graph, coupled with location and messaging data. They can do a better job at targeting.
Again, i respect your opinion, but your needs, and my needs are different. I think they can do a better job at meeting both of our needs.
I, for example, know several people in London, but have no idea where in London exactly they life. Now I didn't actually worry because that just didn't make sense considering the numbers involved, but it seems like a very understandable, human mistake to still get alarmed.
That could mean displaying people safe without their input, based on location data. But that wouldn't have an impact on the problems the author is concerned about.
I think it's essentially a good feature, but this incident may just not have been a good fit.
Yeah, it's a human mistake, but technology should be moving people away from animalistic fears and desires, not pushing them towards it. The easier thing to do would be to realize those odds and realize you can't control these things instead of relying on a social network as a crutch.
That may be cynical, but Facebook isn't doing this because they care about you, they're doing it because it's yet another way to get people attached so Facebook can make advertising dollars. That's cynical.
Do you have a suggestion for how that could be practically done?
> The easier thing to do would be to realize those odds and realize you can't control these things instead of relying on a social network as a crutch.
Easier? What the easy way you're suggesting for changing these attitudes and beliefs among the general population?
FWIW, this wasn't the case in my (very large) extended family my entire childhood. Depending on how widespread coverage of the event was, a family member get calls or texts asking if I was okay whenever something dangerous happened
For those of us who do not use social media [yep, looks like I have to be "that guy" today], it's in no way the default. I can tell you that if people I know don't hear from me over social media, they are not going to bat an eye, because it is normal not to hear from me over social media.
It's an interesting question though: Does frequent use of something like Facebook lead to an expectation of future frequent use of it from your peers? I'm not sure if that's true. Try it as an experiment. Don't log into social media for 3 months. See how many "friends" actually try to contact you through some other means to check if you're OK. My guess is that fewer than you think will. I know when I jumped ship on social media, I just stopped logging in without telling anyone, and exactly zero people panicked. They just started E-mailing me when they had something to say.
This is especially problematic when you consider Facebook’s business model benefits from increased engagement with its platform. Add to that, it also recently stepped into the personal fundraising space. And today, as chance would have it, Facebook announced that Safety Check will be integrating these personal fundraisers (starting in the US).
An FAQ for Facebook’s Fundraisers notes that the company levies a fee for personal donations of 6.9% + $.30, while fees for nonprofit donations range from 5% to 5.75%.
It's nuts.
The fire in London was not a catastrophe of the scale of a tsunami or a major terrorist attack, but the pictures were frightening and impressive, and it is still a huge tragedy. So I can imagine many residents of London got worried messages from friends and family abroad.
If a bomb goes off in Baltimore, I don't call all my DC friends.
On 9/11 I was a kid living in Germany, but had relatives in California. My teachers were incredibly concerned and treated my like I was wrapped in cotton, or as if I had lost somebody personally. It's a weird thing.
How do you know they haven't? Just because you have and feel one way doesn't mean they haven't.
>"If he's feeling stressed out because of FB opening the "I'm okay" service in that small area for that catastrophic fire,"
I'm not sure I would consider 6 miles a 'small area.'
Point taken. That said, his entire essay reads to me as a man unaffected by hardship.
> I'm not sure I would consider 6 miles a 'small area.'
Point taken. That said, let's compare the area affected in New York City on 9/11 to the London apartment fire. WTC's disaster would have benefited from FB's safety check feature. That day/evening I manually called (a lot) of people based on their work address in my contact list. Everybody checked out okay. Some days later, I find out a associate was at a Risk Waters risk conference in the Windows of the World restaurant. He died. Because the conference attendance was (of course) handwritten and only in the building, nobody knew who was there and who wasn't. Had FB's safety check feature been around in those days, I think that particular situation would not have been so chaotic for the families.
Should Facebook have created a 'please reconfirm' feature? If so, how often should hey have triggered it? For 9/11, there are at least four main events: two plane hits and two building collapses, but there were more: additional buildings, etc.
Would it have helped the families of first the first responders like NYFD/NYPD/EMTs? Are first responders supposed to take time to "check in" on FB? Would it have been any less chaotic for their families?
And honestly I find it really disturbing to compare tragedies, especially so in the context of their value to a FB feature.
I guess I feel I have the right to make the comparison. I wasn't there in NYC, but I had "some skin in the game" on 9/11 so to speak. From that experience, and from later ones, I can put myself into the shoes of somebody wondering if their loved one was mixed up in the London fire. To them, it doesn't matter that the fire affected only one apartment building in London.
This difference is my problem with the Safety Check system and, I believe, the authors. If there is an event where my safety is indeed in a majority questionable state (Typhoon takes out my town) then prompt me with a check #ThankYou. If there was an event which doesn't swing to a majority question then leave it to the individual case.
2 side notes: 1. Why do I personally take issue? Well, I was a student during the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Ohio_State_University_att... and felt "forced" to provide my answer to the Safety Check as I know my one crazy aunt would go loony if I didn't. In no way did the event warrant this switch from perceived safety to opt-in safety (it was 13 students hurt of >50,000).
2. As other commenters have noted "With great power, comes great responsibility!". If they're going to deploy this technology make sure it provides value and effects, changes safety to opt-in, for the smallest possible subset. Additionally, as you pointed out in your original post allow individuals to add themselves to the Safety Check list if you are getting spammed with messages.
Sorry for the long post but, like the author, I was very taken aback when I first encountered this feature on Facebook. While I understand the good intentions. Personally, it fell into the area of prompting a world where we need that instant knowledge, text back, response, etc. which frankly isn't that healthy...
After reading all the comments my observations kicked off, your's actually caused me to think outside of my own set of experiences. I kinda see your point. That said, I still stand by my original position that FB's service fills a purpose at the Katrina / regional earthquake & tsunami level. However perhaps they need to work on the fine tuning. Personally glad I don't work in this area inside FB! They are going to be criticized for setting the threshold too high or too low regardless.
Hypotheticals about how 9/11 would have played in the presence of a safety notification by facebook are conjecture, and seem pretty far fetched to me.
The reality is the vast majority of people are getting drawn in, dishonestly, into interaction with FB.
It happened in my city also, a underground subway was getting constructed, not even used by people yet, and a small portion collapsed. Almost everyone in the city got a safety check notification, hundreds of thousands of people, for an event that killed no one, and only affected a handful of workers. Why is it necessary to notify the city of that? It's irresponsible and dishonest.
Needs to be some blend of proximity at that time/frequency of visit. Facebook probably stores all of this in any case, so a bit more tweaking on their part will make it easier to deal with.
If you're like me, living in Australia... 6 miles is considerably tiny :P
He does make valid points, and furthermore, as others have said, a 6 mile radius in a city like London covers hundreds of thousands of people.
I can and would argue until infinity that there is absolutely no need whatsoever for a 6 mile radius warning in the event of 1 (one) single building on fire. Weather you like it or not or agree with FB or not, this was a completely localized event of minimal or no impact (other than maybe traffic for a couple of blocks??) to such an area.
The same is clearly not true for events of other nature (natural disasters, nuclear, maybe manhunts but I already find that one questionable.., etc.)
That is to say, the service is not evil or a bad idea. The criticism is more on the execution and the unnecessary, rather opportunistic, abuse of such an event.
If the author is indeed biased because he did not live through such an event, then you are most definitely also biased because you did live through one; and you certainly seem to be not only receptive and even defensive, but apparently offended.
This was more of yet another case of attention grabbing, manipulative and opportunistic behaviour with a good samaritan cover.
Make no mistake: salesmen, media (in all formats), advertisers, politicians and companies of all sorts have been doing this for centuries.
I understand you lived through an instance where this helped, but a single building on fire does not equal a natural disaster. The scale and impact is just very different, there is no arguing that.
It's pretty simple actually: there is (should be) an appropriate level of response and a corresponding correct setting. In this particular case, it was way way off. Don't let your personal experience prevent you from recognizing that, for it's the same thing you accuse him of.
And again, even acknowledging that, you may still not agree that it was done with an opportunistic intention; and that's fine, but it shouldn't prevent you or anyone from openly discussing where the correct boundaries are.
My read from the author's article was that because the event was too inconveniencing for him because FB chose to response to this singular somewhat small event, with arguably too wide a net, that safety check isn't needed anywhere for anything.
Of course I used my personal experiences to refute his entire article.
>other than maybe traffic for a couple of blocks??
Yeah you're underestimating the impact here, I live half a mile away and it was carnage yesterday. They've closed one of the major routes out of London (the Westway) and two tube lines which affected most of central London.
Thankfully things have _mostly_ returned to normal now.
No, it covers MILLIONS of people.
Facebook is just spreading fear to make people more docile and suggestible.
It's just like terrorist attacks and winning the lottery. Sure, these things happen but they don't happen to you.
Facebook and the media love to pick out single unusual cases to make the world seem smaller and more dangerous than it is.
The world is massive, there are more people in it and more things happening than anyone can really appreciate.
While that one tower was burning in London there were probably hundreds of other buildings of the same size burning in other places around the world at the same time. Why does FB focus so much on that one small incident at the expense of all other incidents which actually add up to more? Cold statistics are just not as interesting as emotionally-charged outlier stories.
Hundreds sounds like a massive overestimation to me. You're saying that every single day there are hundreds of comparable building fires around the world. If we conservatively take "hundreds" to be 200, that would be 200*365 every year. That's 73000 every year!
There is generically a far wider use in the US of combustible materials in buildings (compared to Europe) and this is probably only mildly balanced by the low density of housing (with the obvius exception of the relatively few big cities).
If we use these data:
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.h...
They are better than before: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf but not enough.
Between 3000 and 4000 deaths per year (out of a population of around 330 millons) is 0,001 % or 1 every 100,000,which is still very, very high.
I do recollect that the FB safety check was launched, in large part, because of the 3/11 disaster. Maybe for commercial reasons, but I do recall companies doing whatever they could to help the people of Japan at the time.
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/10/introducing-safety-chec...
However, the problem is its application to a much wider spectrum of incidents. So the chance of lives saved is being drastically reduced, while the collateral damage is massive.
We all have those extremely nervous and neurotic friends who jump to conclusions about things that would have no affect on you whatsoever.
I've had people just today ask me if I was ok based on the fact that the UPS shootings occurred in San Francisco and I'm currently in the Bay Area.
Now with Facebook able to unilaterally decide that I might have been affected, so they send out a systemwide alert, that confirms or creates everybody's worst fears. If I am affected, I'll reach out when I'm able to. If I'm not affected, why waste cycles calming people down that I didn't alert?
- An abduction that involved the dad taking the kids against the mother's will for a few days -- three states away
- A triple murder-suicide -- 300 miles away
- A woman arrested for being cruel to her animals, complete with pictures -- in a city 150 miles away
And this is with my blocks as high as I can make them.
I am constantly being bombarded by news that affects a very small segment of the population in communities far distant from the one I live in.
This does not provide any sort of public service to me. Emotional-laden content such as this and the "I'm safe" buttons exist for Facebook's purposes far, far more than they do for the user's purposes.
This is the way of the new PC crowd: do something that benefits you but can be spun as a kindness to the community. Then shout down anybody who points out that you're only acting in your self interest.
I do not doubt that this has a benefit for that small number of people actually trapped in a large-scale natural disaster (Although I would wonder what, exactly, in a world of billions of people constitutes "large scale"?) But if you waste five minutes of ten million people's lives with a notification like this? That's 5 minutes X 10 million = more than 2,200 man-years. It's the equivalent of 30 people's lives simply to make a few people feel better. In addition, because of the numbers involved, overall it actually creates much more stress than it reduces. There is a not-insignificant healthcare cost associated with things like this.
The old-time capitalist pigs were easy to understand: they made stuff in order to make money. The new guys on the block are full of a lot more bullshit than the older guys -- and people who aren't paying attention are easily suckered into the schpiel and the concomitant pathos.
(Honest question; I don't use FB, and this feature seems about as useful as being woken up by a 2AM Amber Alert on my cell phone here in the US)
As OP, I lived through a major natural disaster, and I posted that I was safe on my timeline, and most of my friends that were connected with the disaster did.
Honestly I'd have thought this situation would call for a lot more than an "I'm ok" checkbox. Something like the recent London terror attacks (disaster in a public place, not just one specific building) seems a decent fit for I'm ok but a disaster where you lose your home seems like the opposite of ok.
Followed by an adrenaline crash. Followed by all the little muscles around my knees and spine giving up. For the next months, sleeping on other people's guest beds, these little muscle pulls ached. I was mentally drained and physically in low-moderate pain for about a year afterward.
My strong recommendation for everybody's emergency supply kit: pack a jumbo bottle of ibuprofen. Being homeless physically hurts.
At the same time he was attempting to watch his show, I was at work dealing with a flooded basement lab and wondering if my home, which was close to the path of the storm, was still standing.
Some people are very self-centered.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14412146
Thank god the author hasn't lived through an event where everybody you know is affected by the event. The ability to say "I'm okay", say it once, and have everybody you know on FB see it is a huge stress reducer. It cuts back on the number of "are you okay?" messages you receive during the event when you may not have a lot of battery or a lot of spare brain to dedicate to answering lots of bullshit inquiries.
If he's feeling stressed out because of FB opening the "I'm okay" service in that small area for that catastrophic fire, he's being a self centered jerk. I guarantee that FBs service is helping some poor soul mixed up in that mess.
Edit: The Facebook safety check feature is not unique to Facebook. In many ways it mimics Japan's disaster message board feature. Every teleco in Japan offers this service:
https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/info/disaster/disaster_b...
I really think the author has lived too lucky a life in a place that has not suffered overmuch from disasters. He can't see beyond his own narrow vision.