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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

#221

Post by jimmies »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #194
an_account wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also just post on Facebook, "I'm okay, I survived [the event]" if you would find value in telling all your friends. Why does Facebook need to prompt?

Unfortunately, you can't trust Facebook to actually show your posts to other people. Their "algorithm" - a cancerous wart that has infected Instagram too now - means that they show you what they want to show you, not necessarily what your friends post.

If your friends don't care to check on you personally, why do you think that they care about your post (that you say you're fine) that doesn't get shown to you on facebook?

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

#222

Post by NOSHSHNACKERS »

Its part of the swirling down the toilet bowl of selfishness - its one more way fb helps people say - Look at meeeeeee Im an individual I exist.. ugh.. if was in an emergency I would call my mom and there you go.. everyone would fing know I was ok because mom is old and she talks to people with her vocal cords using sound waves generated through the medium of atmosphere and wow does that work.

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

#223

Post by colordrops »

Kiro wrote: post #196
sergiotapia wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Complete nonsense. That you actually believe this instead of the much more plausible explanations are beyond me.

Why is it not plausible?

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

#224

Post by Kiro »

colordrops wrote: post #223
Kiro wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complete nonsense. That you actually believe this instead of the much more plausible explanations are beyond me.

Why is it not plausible?

Because if Facebook was actually listening to your mic we would know it. They wouldn't be able to hide and it would be a massive scandal. It's simply too conspiratorial to take seriously when there is no evidence other than anecdotal stories like this.

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

#225

Post by colordrops »

HalfwayToDice wrote: post #125
fratlas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you up until the mic comment. I ran a few tests with friends. We talked about very obscure topics repeatedly (and nothing else) that we would otherwise would have never messaged, and after scrolling 2 mins, targeted ads appeared for those topics. Happened for multiple topics.

It embarrasses me to see such conspiratorial nonsense on this website. There are many reasons why such things happen: coincidence, someone google the topic from the same router IP address, ad tracking on Googled websites, etc etc The idea that one of the worlds largest companies would risk their entire business by secretly recording their users for ad revenue is absurd on almost every level. Yet some people on Hacker…

It embarrasses me to see such horrible logic and head-in-the-sand thinking on this website.

Whether they record ambient audio or not, how is it implausible or out of character with everything else they do? Facebook and many other companies collect countless dimensions of data on users to profile them for marketing. Audio is just one more. It's not even really that disturbing or far fetched. Why would they ignore such a lucrative data source when they've already tapped so many others?

It's a direct business plan with Amazon's echo for christ sake. What is so hard to comprehend about this?

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

#226

Post by colordrops »

Kiro wrote: post #224
colordrops wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not plausible?

Because if Facebook was actually listening to your mic we would know it. They wouldn't be able to hide and it would be a massive scandal. It's simply too conspiratorial to take seriously when there is no evidence other than anecdotal stories like this.

Is this non-anecdotal enough for you? I'm tired of using the "conspiracy" label to shut down valid discussion.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786909

https://www.cnet.com/news/samsungs-warning-our-smart-tvs-rec...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/09...

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

#227

Post by ivanhoe »

So now people can't stand being "stressed" by a simple dialog asking them if they wish to mark themselves safe? I'd understand if it's some business app and you're in the middle of something important, but c'mon you're already wasting your time looking at newsfeed? Is it really that hard and time consuming to answer or just ignore that dialog? Or is it about emotions, you don't like being reminded of the bad things happening in the real world around you?!

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

#228

Post by jondubois »

jamesrcole wrote: post #216
jondubois wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 Hundreds sounds like a massive overestimation to me. You're saying that every single day there are hundreds of comparable building fires around the world. If we conservatively take "hundreds" to be 200, that would be 200*365 every year. That's 73000 ev…

Well according to this source: http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-re..., there were 358K+ home fires in the US alone between 2010 and 2014 and I'm guessing that US has pretty good fire safety standards compared to the rest of the world (and this doesn't even include buildings which are not homes). 73K per year doesn't seem so crazy anymore.

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

#229

Post by adrow »

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.

Two words, "lookalike modelling", or as FB calls it Lookalike Audiences:

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/164749007013531

Arcade Foobar want to draw in new customers, and so generate a lookalike audience based on data they have from existing customers. The modelling algo then compares data points for people who 'look like' their customers, and those people can then be targeted with a high probability that they will also be interested in the same thing.

This is a perfectly plausible explanation that doesn't require FB to be listening to you through your phone mic.

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

#230

Post by egwor »

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…

> 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.

No, it covers MILLIONS of people.

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