Facebook activates its safety check feature to help people find out details of their friends' safety.
Facebook has activated its safety check tool for users in Nigeria, following a bomb blast in Yola on October 17, 2015. The safety tool provides an opportunity to every user of the platform who resides in a region affected by an attack or calamity to mark their safety. It is the second time that the tool had been activated in the aftermath of terrorism. The first was during the shootings that took place in Paris on Friday.
Users appreciated the feature on the social media, but they also questioned that why it had not been switched on in other situations, such as suicidal bombings in Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Thursday.
Facebook news exclaimed that CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced it was switched again after the attack in the country this evening. He said, “After the Paris attacks last week, we made the decision to use Safety Check for more tragic events like this going forward.”
Facebook news today affirmed that the social network platform had been subjected to criticism, nevertheless, for making a decision to employ the tool to terrorist attacks following killings in Paris. Previously atrocities in least developed states, often with a greater number of deaths, had not made Facebook change its policy in the same manner.
The company justified that it switched on the tool in the French capital because it had witnessed many actions on its platforms as the events unfolded. “We talked with our employees on the ground, who felt that there was still a need that we could fill”, Facebook’s official Alex Schultz posted in a blog.
He stated that the tool would be less valuable in other situations. “During an ongoing crisis, like war or epidemic, Safety Check in its current form is not that useful for people: because there isn’t a clear start or end point and, unfortunately, it’s impossible to know when someone is truly ‘safe”, Mr. Alex wrote.
Others fear that enabling the feature after terrorism could have a different impact to utilizing the facility for natural calamities. Atlantic magazine's associate editor Robinson Meyer was worried about the service's usage, as he believes that it could help terrorists attain their objective of scaring the masses.
Facebook Breaking News informed that when the organization activates the feature, it shares a message with users who it detects could be harmed in any manner questioning if they are secure. The users could then utilize the feature to signify their safety. Users could also employ the feature for marking others as secure. The details could only be accessed within a user’s Facebook network.
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