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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

#111

Post by jdietrich »

rabboRubble wrote: post #78

I lived through a major natural disaster that left me an evacuee for months. Facebook's safety check is the only reason I haven't killed my account and I've said this before in prior comments here on Hacker News. 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 everyb…

About 500 people were directly endangered by this incident. The Safety Check alert seems to extend well beyond Greater London, so at least 9 million people. That gives us an approximate false positive rate of 99.995%.

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.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#112

Post by amaks »

austenallred wrote: post #53
aaron-lebo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just call my friends up. Crazy, I know. I don't need an algorithmic feed to tell me what my interests are and what my friends are doing because I know the first and there are other ways of doing the latter that don't involve giving up my privacy.

> I just call my friends up. Crazy, I know. There's nothing wrong with calling friends up, but that takes a lot of work and a synchronous connection between two people. There are hundreds of people I want to know about or stay in touch with but don't have the time to call them all up individually. Facebook makes being friends easier. That's a pretty solid value add. I would probably lose a lot of friends more easily…

How about email?

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#113

Post by throwanem »

rabboRubble wrote: post #100
bogomipz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Thank god the author hasn't lived through an event where everybody you know is affected by the event." 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.'

> How do you know they haven't? Just because you have and feel one way doesn't mean they haven't. 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. T…

I get what you're saying, and I don't disagree. But destruction of the World Trade Center really doesn't compare to a single structure fire, even in a large structure. They're not even in the same ballpark.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#114

Post by ceocoder »

My cousin and his wife were in Nice on the day of attack in 2016, after obsessively refreshing the page; seeing a green check mark next to their name was the greatest sigh of relief.

Back in 2001, I was in India when one of the worst earthquakes to hit that state in recent memory struck. I lived with my grandma and grandpa, and rest of my family - mom, dad, sister, uncles, aunts, cousins were at a wedding. For literally 7 hours we had no way of communicating with each other - they didn't know if we made it or not.

So yeah, Safety Check tool is just fine in my book, just mere act of being able to say "I'm OK" makes a massive difference.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Gujarat_earthquake

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#115

Post by praneshp »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #108
praneshp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you also expect people who commit crimes to rot in jail forever, and do not support rehabilitation instead. Because the dumb fucks comment was in 2004. Edit: (In case you nitpick my analogy) I guess you would not hire a person that was jailed in the past, because you cannot trust them.

I see no evidence whatsoever that facebook has earned my trust.

That's not what my OP said though. He said "I can't trust because dumb fucks", not "I can't trust because they haven't earned it". I don't like Facebook either, but I dislike this hypocrisy more.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#116

Post by bogomipz »

rabboRubble wrote: post #100
bogomipz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Thank god the author hasn't lived through an event where everybody you know is affected by the event." 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.'

> How do you know they haven't? Just because you have and feel one way doesn't mean they haven't. 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. 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."

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.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#117

Post by btown »

jdietrich wrote: post #111
rabboRubble wrote: post #78

I lived through a major natural disaster that left me an evacuee for months. Facebook's safety check is the only reason I haven't killed my account and I've said this before in prior comments here on Hacker News. 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 everyb…

About 500 people were directly endangered by this incident. The Safety Check alert seems to extend well beyond Greater London, so at least 9 million people. That gives us an approximate false positive rate of 99.995%. 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 sin…

I have to disagree. "Not safe" became the default as soon as the concept of social media hit; if there's the slightest chance you may have been affected by an incident, anyone who would check your social postings to see if there was any "word from you" would assume the worst in the absence of such a posting. The human mind is evolved for both empathy and "what-if" scenarios, but not for probability; it will snap to "what if my loved one was in that apartment because they were in the country" rather than "it is highly improbable." Given that, Safety Check actually dampens those emotions on a societal scale, by making it easier and more natural for each potentially-endangered poster to assuage the fears of people in their circles.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#118

Post by Cyph0n »

King-Aaron wrote: post #106
bogomipz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Thank god the author hasn't lived through an event where everybody you know is affected by the event." 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.'

> I'm not sure I would consider 6 miles a 'small area.' If you're like me, living in Australia... 6 miles is considerably tiny :P

In the context of the London fire, it's definitely not a small area. A similar fire in, say, Sydney wouldn't magically make a 6 mile radius "tiny".

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#119

Post by imartin2k »

rabboRubble wrote: post #78

I lived through a major natural disaster that left me an evacuee for months. Facebook's safety check is the only reason I haven't killed my account and I've said this before in prior comments here on Hacker News. 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 everyb…

I have not lived through a major catastrophe but I agree with you that in such a case, this feature can be very important.

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.

Re: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

#120

Post by seanp2k2 »

jdietrich wrote: post #111
rabboRubble wrote: post #78

I lived through a major natural disaster that left me an evacuee for months. Facebook's safety check is the only reason I haven't killed my account and I've said this before in prior comments here on Hacker News. 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 everyb…

About 500 people were directly endangered by this incident. The Safety Check alert seems to extend well beyond Greater London, so at least 9 million people. That gives us an approximate false positive rate of 99.995%. 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 sin…

"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.

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