Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
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Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#2I noticed this last night as well. Someone I knew checked in to say they were ok. I looked at the news and saw that it was a building that housed 500 people, in one of the largest cities in the world.
It was the same recently when we had a storm in New Zealand, and they activated safety check for the entire country. I don't think it even ended up raining where I was at the time.
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#3I find it disturbing that FB sees itself as the arbiter of which events and what people are in need of alerting.
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#4Its all fun and games until FB starts taking over your sense of security, your world view, and your life.
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#5I noticed this last night as well. Someone I knew checked in to say they were ok. I looked at the news and saw that it was a building that housed 500 people, in one of the largest cities in the world. It was the same recently when we had a storm in New Zealand, and they activated safety check for the entire country. I don't think it even ended up raining where I was at the time.
Do you have friends/family in remote countries? New Zealand is smaller than California and when crap goes down in Southern California I still have people asking me about it even though I live in Silicon Valley.
I can see the reasoning to just turn it on for all of New Zealand when it's something as big as a hurricane.
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#6I find it disturbing that FB sees itself as the arbiter of which events and what people are in need of alerting.
I don't. For many people it's their primary communication platform, and things like this are to a large extent driven by demand for such features in the wake of previous tragedies/disasters, after setting up impromptu groups or check-in mechanisms. It's not a simple problem to solve.
Now I don't think they're doing it very well and the fact that it's subject to the typical feature creep is a problem, but then feature creep is a general problem in software.
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#7I've said it before here, and I'll say it every time it's relevant:
Stop using Facebook. Start telling your friends and family to do the same. As the "smart computer person" in many people's lives, you can be the voice they need to hear.
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#8[deleted]
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#9Putting Safety Check activation in this protective, semi-algorithmic swaddling means the company can cushion itself from blame when the feature is (or is not) activated — since it’s not making case-by-case decisions itself — yet also (apparently) sidestep the responsibility for its technology enabling widespread algorithmic stress. As is demonstrably the case here, where it’s been activated across London and beyond.
We would be much better off if we stopped accepting fake apologies and 'the algorithm did it not us' excuses.
Facebook employees programmed this thing under, I assume, the direction of management. This is Facebook's fault not some magic, wibly, wobly force. It's one thing to have a bug, but this is working as specified.
Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
#10Putting Safety Check activation in this protective, semi-algorithmic swaddling means the company can cushion itself from blame when the feature is (or is not) activated — since it’s not making case-by-case decisions itself — yet also (apparently) sidestep the responsibility for its technology enabling widespread algorithmic stress. As is demonstrably the case here, where it’s been activated across London and beyond.…
Don't forget, FB's culture is to move fast and break things. That's ok when you're breaking features, that's not acceptable when you are breaking social norms, and that's what happens when they are so damn big.
They might be sorry, but you can dry a lot of tears with wads of cash. They never see any real consequences for their mistakes.