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.