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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

#291

Post by mmirate »

mikeash wrote: post #289
mmirate wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, none of this actually influences how normal people think and act. Well that's bloody stupid and innumerate of them. Surely, enabling such vices can't be good in the long-term. ... and how, again, are these people able to acquire positions of power such that we still have to care-about/interact-with them?

Turns out that having a solid logical understanding of the risks of accidental death is more or less uncorrelated with having the sort of people skills which allow a person to attain positions of power.

But this points to not a specific misunderstanding of accidental death, but to a general inability to comprehend/apply statistics, which includes things such as cost/benefit analyses.

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

#293

Post by mikeash »

mmirate wrote: post #291
mikeash wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out that having a solid logical understanding of the risks of accidental death is more or less uncorrelated with having the sort of people skills which allow a person to attain positions of power.

But this points to not a specific misunderstanding of accidental death, but to a general inability to comprehend/apply statistics, which includes things such as cost/benefit analyses.

It's fascinating to see nerds weird out over people's inability to comprehend basic probability and statistics (which the human brain is innately bad at) while displaying a complete inability to understand other people (which the human brain is innately great at). And yes, I do it too sometimes.

Stop arguing about why the average person, or even the average powerful person, ought to have an excellent understanding of these things, and start exploring why they don't. You'll come out of it more informed.

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

#294

Post by sctb »

naaaaak wrote: post #66
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…

> Why does everything Facebook do turn into a riot? Their core audience are a bunch of SJW cucks. Everything is offensive.

Posting like this will get your account banned. Please stop.

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

#295

Post by mrpopo »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #195
hedora wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not post something to your timeline or update your status? Presumably that would have worked just as well. (Honest question; I don't use FB, and this feature seems about as useful as being woken up by a 2AM Amber Alert on my cell phone here in the US)

Because "the algorithm" might decide your family don't get to see that update. Facebook is no point chronological, nor does it show everything your friends post. They pick and choose.

If people don't care about you enough to check your timeline if they think you are endangered, is there a point to letting them know you're safe?

As OP, I lived through a major natural disaster, and I posted that I was safe on my timeline, and most of my friends that were connected with the disaster did.

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

#296

Post by batiudrami »

macNchz wrote: post #271
batiudrami wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

I think it certainly helps that FBM is the communication standard in Australia - the only SMS I get now are sent by computers, and iMessage never really caught on. This gives some lock in, even if you don't actively use the website or the app. It is assumed that if you want to contact someone after meeting them you'll just look them up in messenger.

Yours is an interesting perspective because I tend to assume that people on HN who say "just call your friends" are less social and don't have as many people they want to catch up with. Honestly events and groups are the real utility - there's where everything I care about happens on Facebook itself (aside from Messenger - which is good, but we would be doing the same thing elsewhere if it didn't exist).

Though the feed is still terrible - I keep my friends list relatively trimmed (~200 people) and it's still rubbish.

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

#297

Post by idibidiartists »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #285
idibidiartists wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of them are business accounts, bots and fake or throwaway. I have 3. How can anyone be sure that each account is a person. It says a lot about general IQ on HN that I got 4 downvotes for suggesting that Facebook has less users (real ones) than China has people (real ones, too!)

Have your upvote. Maybe if you had said this the first time you wouldn't have gotten downvoted. It's possible, even likely that FB has 600 million fake accounts, but you didn't even bother explaining yourself.

So you're telling me that if I state a fact but don't back it up then I get down-voted? On so many occasions I've stated facts without explanation that got up-voted. So what I'm trying to say is: the idiocy of crowds.

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

#298

Post by rabboRubble »

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."

Agreed. "Bullshit inquiries" was probably not the best way to describe people caring enough to ask. At the time I found myself repeating the same thing over and over and over again, followed by telling people the bright spot in the whole situation "I have plenty of emergency food and water." Wash rinse repeat. "I have plenty of emergency food and water." Wash rinse repeat. "I have plenty of emergency food and water." Wash rinse repeat.

Followed by an adrenaline crash. Followed by all the little muscles around my knees and spine giving up. For the next months, sleeping on other people's guest beds, these little muscle pulls ached. I was mentally drained and physically in low-moderate pain for about a year afterward.

My strong recommendation for everybody's emergency supply kit: pack a jumbo bottle of ibuprofen. Being homeless physically hurts.

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

#299

Post by 3ygun »

rabboRubble wrote: post #284
3ygun wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rabboRubble To start off I understand your point that the Safety Check feature can be valuable. Japan's typhoon system is fantastic example you brought up where the entire population of a city needs to, after the incident, notate their safety. However, this is vastly different than the case being discussed of the London fire. In the London fire a small minority, ~500 people, results in a 6 miles notification (other c…

Interesting comment from a different angle. I guess what set me greatly opposed to the author's article was "There is zero need for a Safety Check feature." quote near the end of the essay. I disagree with him entirely, and for the reasons I originally stated. After reading all the comments my observations kicked off, your's actually caused me to think outside of my own set of experiences. I kinda see your point. Tha…

Glad to help. I agree it shouldn't be removed entirely and FB will get crap either way. Thanks for the differing opinion, best!

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

#300

Post by captainmuon »

alistairSH wrote: post #283
captainmuon wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Why would people worry that you, in Beijing, was at risk from an explosion in Tianjin (100km distant)? If a bomb goes off in Baltimore, I don't call all my DC friends.

Because people have no sense of scale in foreign countries, that is my point. Especially if you are viewing a map of all China trying to find Beijing, 100km is not much :-).

On 9/11 I was a kid living in Germany, but had relatives in California. My teachers were incredibly concerned and treated my like I was wrapped in cotton, or as if I had lost somebody personally. It's a weird thing.

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