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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

#201

Post by te_chris »

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…

As you are a former fb employee and current big tech employee I highly suggest you look a bit deeper at some of the arguments against facebook's monopoly on personal surveillance and critically ask yourself whether you're really ok with where this is leading.

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

#202

Post by wapz »

donkeyd wrote: post #184
afro88 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That will have the flip side of family members getting extra worried if not marked safe, because Facebook wasn't checked for example.

I'm guessing most family members are most likely not going to ask the question on facebook instead of just call their loved ones or send a text or email. My personal line of thinking is (maybe check facebook if they're super active to see if they said they're ok). Send a text or email if I'm a little worried. Call if I'm very worried. After a text or call I wouldn't go back and push the ask button on FB.

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

#203

Post by notahacker »

ars wrote: post #23

> However 97 are worryingly labelled “not marked as safe yet”. That's the problem. It should be a positive notification only, without any negative one. People can say they are safe (I see value in that). But facebook should not say anything at all if someone has not declared themself safe.

This. And especially this when Facebook knows I'm active on my account 60 miles away, and has a huge amount of data that suggests I never had any connection to that area, never mind the specific residential address the fire took place in.

Facebook had a far more legitimate reason to publicly not mark me as safe from an attack in a busy commuter area outside Borough Market a few days after I'd visited it and used Whatsapp there, but I'll have to check whether a friend asking me if I was alive (I was overseas with data turned off) was driven by genuine or Facebook-UI-induced concern

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

#204

Post by wastedhours »

bogomipz wrote: post #93
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…

>"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.'

Proximity at the time of the event isn't always a good indicator either way, I live a very short walk from the attack last weekend and am usually in that location around those times regularly, but that day was quite a few miles away - there was still value in me checking myself as safe even if I wasn't physically there.

Needs to be some blend of proximity at that time/frequency of visit. Facebook probably stores all of this in any case, so a bit more tweaking on their part will make it easier to deal with.

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

#206

Post by jondubois »

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…

You're an outlier. These accidents never happen.

Facebook is just spreading fear to make people more docile and suggestible.

It's just like terrorist attacks and winning the lottery. Sure, these things happen but they don't happen to you.

Facebook and the media love to pick out single unusual cases to make the world seem smaller and more dangerous than it is.

The world is massive, there are more people in it and more things happening than anyone can really appreciate.

While that one tower was burning in London there were probably hundreds of other buildings of the same size burning in other places around the world at the same time. Why does FB focus so much on that one small incident at the expense of all other incidents which actually add up to more? Cold statistics are just not as interesting as emotionally-charged outlier stories.

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

#207

Post by thinkfurther »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #146
thinkfurther wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fran…

It's not about him saying it, it's about what it betrays, and about the fact that millions of people do have their personal information and intimate conversations on FB. If it was just about his personality, his fake smile would be enough. I don't need to count the flaws of someone who exhibits not a single virtue.

> it all sounds like "let's hate him because he's rich".

Oh, so it sounds like that. To you. That says more about you than about what I wrote.

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

#208

Post by RichardHeart »

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…

Surely putting facebook in charge of public safety announcements, instead of say, emergency services, is a terrible idea.

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

#209

Post by aembleton »

kylegordon wrote: post #200

This particular instance of the safety check was utterly ridiculous and pointless. My wife and a friend were prompted to 'Mark as safe', except we both were in Glasgow. Over 400 miles away.

Have you been in London recently? I think the safety check algorithm must look at your location history for the last n days and ask you if you've recently been in the area.

I live in Manchester, but was in Bali when the bomb went off last month. I got the safety check. This made sense as my friends might not have been aware that I was away, and so it was useful for them to be alerted that I was safe.

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

#210

Post by intoverflow2 »

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…

> a major natural disaster that left me an evacuee for months

Honestly I'd have thought this situation would call for a lot more than an "I'm ok" checkbox. Something like the recent London terror attacks (disaster in a public place, not just one specific building) seems a decent fit for I'm ok but a disaster where you lose your home seems like the opposite of ok.

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