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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

#271

Post by macNchz »

batiudrami wrote: post #35
aaron-lebo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's obvious abstract reasons why they should stop using it: 1. Facebook knows about all of your interactions on Facebook, and they probably know what you are buying and what sites you visit through tracking mechanisms. In real life we call those people stalkers. 2. What utility are they really getting? Is keeping up with every part of your friend's life (or the good parts they show you) really worth the stress an…

The HN set really doesn't seem to understand where the value of Facebook actually is. It's not the feed. The feed is mind numbing, time wasting garbage. It's being able to communicate and organise things, with all your friends, in the one place. It's in Facebook Messenger, which everyone has. It's in events organisation and events discovery. It's in groups. Facebook supplies a directory of everything happening in my…

This kind of utility is completely dependent on having a critical mass of people you know who actively use the platform. I'm 29, live in NYC, pretty active and social. On the odd occasion that I do go on Facebook it seems that the bulk of my ~500 'friends' who are still active on it are like...people I worked with in a summer job in 10th grade who post mostly memes. The events I get invited to are pseudo-spam bulk invitations.

I honestly would feel the opposite about getting a new acquaintance's contact information vs looking them up on Facebook and sending them a message. I've been going to a lot of weddings recently and phone/email exchange has been common, and I have yet to be asked "are we friends on Facebook? I'll put these pictures up there", which was a very common thing in years past.

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

#272

Post by naasking »

dzjkb wrote: post #137
naasking wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual empirical studies that show they DON'T get any value from it, and that it actually makes people more miserable on the whole?

I don't think people care about "empirical studies" telling them something contrary to their own experience.

Right, because people still believe the sun revolves around the Earth.

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

#273

Post by naasking »

austenallred wrote: post #57
naasking wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual empirical studies that show they DON'T get any value from it, and that it actually makes people more miserable on the whole?

Source?

There are dozens of studies, just Google Facebook depression study.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-38392802

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

#274

Post by mikeash »

Crespyl wrote: post #270
mikeash wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

I think when things like this happen, it usually falls under the category of "bad news is bad news" and people will want to reach out to friends/loved ones who may have been affected. If my friend is going overseas for a month (and there aren't any terror attacks or plane crashes or whatever), I will probably assume they're doing just fine, haven't been mugged or gotten lost in the woods or anything unless I specific…

Well put. "No news is good news" is predicated on no news. If nothing noteworthy happens then most people are fine with assuming you're doing fine until and unless they hear otherwise. But if some disaster (even a localized one) happens in the area where they know you are, that doesn't apply anymore.

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

#275

Post by IanCal »

mikeash wrote: post #253
willvarfar wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

While it'll obviously depend on the people, this is what my parents basically said to me when I spoke to them a bit after the bombing in Manchester.

I probably wasn't involved, and they'd have heard if I was.

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

#276

Post by shopkins »

porpoisemonkey wrote: post #36
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…

My general feeling from the comments I've seen over the years is that HN is not keen on market leading companies in general. I suspect it could be due to a selective audience since the site is tailored to entrepreneurs and startups.

It's because we're skeptical of corporations that hold the kind of power Facebook does -- power derived from their data on literally billions of people -- just as we would be if it was a government doing the same. And companies like Facebook get extra (deserved) scrutiny, because they aren't as accountable to the people using their products, since those people aren't their customers.

It's not about "startups vs. market leading companies." It's this audience knowing the immense power and control companies like Facebook can (and do) exert over us all.

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

#277

Post by poooogles »

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…

Agreed in most, however...

>other than maybe traffic for a couple of blocks??

Yeah you're underestimating the impact here, I live half a mile away and it was carnage yesterday. They've closed one of the major routes out of London (the Westway) and two tube lines which affected most of central London.

Thankfully things have _mostly_ returned to normal now.

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

#278

Post by captainmuon »

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…

You might have friends on Facebook who are not locals. When a chemical plant blew up spectacularly in Tianjin, China, I was more than an hour away in Beijing. I still got a lot of worried inquiries (from those who heard about it anyway). The same when there was a terrorist attack in Berlin. I was at the other side of the city. There was no Safety Check, but I posted about it, because events like these affect people emotionally.

The fire in London was not a catastrophe of the scale of a tsunami or a major terrorist attack, but the pictures were frightening and impressive, and it is still a huge tragedy. So I can imagine many residents of London got worried messages from friends and family abroad.

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

#279

Post by goldfire »

pdkl95 wrote: post #212
seanp2k2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tools are there for you to try it: https://www.charlesproxy.com/documentation/faqs/using-charle... http://docs.telerik.com/fiddler/Configure-Fiddler/Tasks/Conf... You could probably also do it with the emulator. You may need to do something like https://www.bettercap.org/blog/sslstripping-and-hsts-bypass/ or it could be even harder: http://docs.mitmproxy.org/en/stable/certinstall.html#certifi... There are of cour…

While I applaud any attempt to gather real and first-person observations... > I don't see any evidence of any mic uploads. ... I am somewhat concerned at what seems to be a common assumption that Facebook (or any other remote server) is sending the same software to everybody. I find that unlikely when "AB testing" and similar practices are are commonly used. Facebook is very strongly involved with "targeted" services…

If we're talking about mobile apps, it seems more likely that they would send the same software to everyone and just turn on these features being tested by sending some activation signal from a central coordinating service, or perhaps including it in some web content that the app might use. That seems much easier than actually distributing different apps.

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

#280

Post by adrianlmm »

amaks wrote: post #110
adrianlmm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is weird that Facebook always get bashed for privacy and Google (who is even worse in that aspect) always get a free pass, just saying.

"Google (who is even worse in that aspect)" Proof?

Are you a Google advocate?
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