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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

#251

Post by _jal »

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…

> 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.

Right[1]. Nobody makes risky[2], ethically challenged[3] decisions[4] in business[5]. Ever[6]. Doesn't happen[7].

[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/5/11/15628924/alphabet-waymo-law...

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/hampton-creek-serves-another-vega...

[3] http://fortune.com/2016/07/08/rise-fall-elizabeth-holmes-the...

[4] https://www.inc.com/business-insider/inside-lending-club-sca...

[5] http://fortune.com/2016/08/14/fraud-allegations-hud-skully/

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/technology/a-silicon-vall...

[7] http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-us-attorney-could-look-at...

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

#252

Post by ryandrake »

AlexandrB wrote: post #245
losteverything wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel strongly to respond. Chicken little. That's what came to mind when I read your reply. If FB OR ANY other entiry gets you so upset then stop using it. We all make choices. I always give this example. My grandmother could have voted for every losing president during her lifetime but because of other more important choices like who to marry, whether to work hard or not, what people she associates with, when to ha…

> If FB OR ANY other entiry gets you so upset then stop using it. I posted this in another reply, but that's effectively impossible. Facebook collects data on you from friends and family that use it. How do you suggest I stop that? What about Facebooks's tracking code all over the internet? Know a foolproof way to block that too?

If you stop using Facebook, why would you care if they collect data on you from friends? How is what they do with it affecting you? You're not using their product! You know how often I wake up worried about what some company I don't do business with knows about me? Never.

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

#253

Post by mikeash »

willvarfar wrote: post #235
mikeash wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm puzzled by this idea that social norms were "safe by default" until social media came along. It's certainly not my experience. When some high-profile event happens in the area, people check in and worry if they don't hear from you. It's been like this since long before Facebook was a thing. This looks like yet another case of nerds assuming the entire world thinks and acts like we do. Yes, worrying about someone…

It Britain, the default is "no news is good news" , which is a proverb meaning "without information to the contrary you can assume that all is well" .

I hear that phrase a lot, but is that how it actually works when things like this happen, or is it just what people say?

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

#254

Post by _jal »

yladiz wrote: post #246
_jal wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really buy the argument that you would just assume someone is safe before The problem is that it doesn't matter how you react to the feature. The problem is how groups of people react to it. This isn't much different than saying you'd calmly walk to the exit if caught in a fire in a club. Even assuming you evaluate your own behavior in that situation correctly, it has zero effect on everyone else. > There's…

> So maybe if you can't do something reliably, and there are risks to getting it wrong, the proper response isn't 'hold my beer?' Is the argument that this shouldn't be done because it can't be perfect?

No, it is not. I meant what I wrote.

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

#255

Post by yladiz »

_jal wrote: post #254
yladiz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So maybe if you can't do something reliably, and there are risks to getting it wrong, the proper response isn't 'hold my beer?' Is the argument that this shouldn't be done because it can't be perfect?

No, it is not. I meant what I wrote.

Let me put it another way: I don't understand your argument, so I clarified and asked if your argument was X. You said it's not, so what is your argument?

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

#256

Post by jaclaz »

jondubois wrote: post #228
jamesrcole wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I doubt that US has that much good fire safety standards when compared to - say - Europe.

There is generically a far wider use in the US of combustible materials in buildings (compared to Europe) and this is probably only mildly balanced by the low density of housing (with the obvius exception of the relatively few big cities).

If we use these data:

https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.h...

They are better than before: https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf but not enough.

Between 3000 and 4000 deaths per year (out of a population of around 330 millons) is 0,001 % or 1 every 100,000,which is still very, very high.

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

#257

Post by mcguire »

pc86 wrote: post #241
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…

TIL asking someone you know who has been through a disaster if they are okay is a "bullshit inquiry."

Once upon a time, I had to listen to a friend complain about television tornado coverage preempting his favorite TV show.

At the same time he was attempting to watch his show, I was at work dealing with a flooded basement lab and wondering if my home, which was close to the path of the storm, was still standing.

Some people are very self-centered.

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

#258

Post by mcguire »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #188
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…

In the last couple of weeks, I have been notified on Facebook by friends about: - An abduction that involved the dad taking the kids against the mother's will for a few days -- three states away - A triple murder-suicide -- 300 miles away - A woman arrested for being cruel to her animals, complete with pictures -- in a city 150 miles away And this is with my blocks as high as I can make them. I am constantly being bo…

Why do you use Facebook?

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

#259

Post by mcguire »

ghughes wrote: post #65
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.

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…

Should be reasonably easy to check with your favorite network monitoring tool.

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

#260

Post by [deleted] »

brightball wrote: post #218
brightball wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I did the same test with the same results. It's the reason I took the app off my phone and just use the mobile web.

For clarification on what we did for our test, I live in the south east. We don't watch professional baseball at all...so we started talking about going to a Cincinnati Reds game. And then we saw ads for the Reds and MLB. I'm not trying to go full tin foil hat here, but it was a pretty strong coincidence for that to happen.

[deleted]
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