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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

#141

Post by Sacho »

sergiotapia wrote: post #127
ghughes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't buy this theory until I see some evidence. It wouldn't be hard for a talented individual to reverse engineer the Facebook client app to find out if it's either a) continuously recording and uploading raw audio to their servers, or b) continuously recording and locally processing audio before sending information about the content to their servers. Until I see an analysis of their code that indicates eithe…

I had it happen to me too. Why would I lie about something like this? This is my real account, I'm a real guy. My wife and I were talking about celebrating my kids birthday party at Arcade Foobar. A day later she started seeing ads on Facebook about Arcade Foobar. It's grotesque and one of the many reasons why my wife and I no longer have facebook accounts.

You don't have to be lying about it, but consider that we often incorrectly detect patterns where none exist.

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

#142

Post by matt4077 »

jfoutz wrote: post #128
btown wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

That's not an unreasonable stance. I lean the other way. I think, that there is an opportunity, if not a requirement, for fine grained tuning. FB knows a lot about it's users, and can do a better job of predicting who needs the i'm safe button. 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 wid…

Part of the problem is that peoples' worries depend not on what Facebook knows, but what those people know:

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.

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

#143

Post by afro88 »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #120
jdietrich wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Simple solution: have a "ask X if they're safe" button that friends/family can press. If someone presses it, that person gets a push to mark themselves safe. They don't get a push otherwise.

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

#144

Post by marksomnian »

sboselli wrote: post #136
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…

So you're extrapolating your own personal successful experience with every case and every possible setting, while also showing quite a bit of prejudice towards the author. 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 warn…

The GP posted a valid point based on their personal experiences. I don't see the need for any personal attacks or casting of aspersions (I definitely don't see the need for the "salesmen, media, advertisers, politicians and companies" comment). You have a valid point that adds to the discussion, but the ad hominems make it difficult to get to the substance of it.

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

#145

Post by flardinois »

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…

her entire essay...

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

#146

Post by TeMPOraL »

thinkfurther wrote: post #135
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.

1. Did Zuckerberg ever publically come clean about that phase and his motivations during it? 2. Has anything really changed? Otherwise, what is this rehabilitation you speak of? Two parties are required, someone who forgives, someone who seeks forgiveness. To turn not seeking forgiveness into being unforgiving is just projection, and to give forgiveness where it is not sought would make a mockery of the whole effort,…

> Otherwise, what is this rehabilitation you speak of? Two parties are required, someone who forgives, someone who seeks forgiveness.

There's little forgiveness to be sought here. He said something stupid once, as a teenager. Here we are, 13 years later. If someone thinks he is the same person, with the same beliefs, so that one off-the-cuff comment is of any value in evaluating his thinking and behaviour, then frankly, this someone is dumb.

As for the rest of your comment, it all sounds like "let's hate him because he's rich". Your parent talks about basic principles that apply to everyone regardless of their status.

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

#147

Post by rabboRubble »

sboselli wrote: post #136
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…

So you're extrapolating your own personal successful experience with every case and every possible setting, while also showing quite a bit of prejudice towards the author. 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 warn…

Quoting the author himself "There is zero need for a Safety Check feature." I disagree with him entirely for the reasons stated.

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.

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

#149

Post by marksomnian »

bogomipz wrote: post #74
whatevthrow31 wrote: post #20

Ok, I had to make a throwaway for this because apparently its a heated debate. Why does everything Facebook do have to be so heavily criticized? Safety Check is a wonderful feature. If I remember correctly, it started off as an internal hackathon project that got turned into a full feature. They get shit if they turn it on (here), and if they don't turn it on (past tragedies where they failed to turn it on). Why does…

>"It feels like everything Facebook is overblown on HN" And yet you had to create a throwaway account before you could comment.

If I understood GP correctly, he created it due to the heat of the debate, not to make it more heated.
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