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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

#71

Post by icanhackit »

adrianlmm wrote: post #55
icanhackit wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, someone who thinks that it dumbs-down the population, leaving them in an echo chamber of made-up bullshit, lifestyle signalling and narcissism. My position does ignore the positive aspects of Facebook like finding old acquaintances, coordinating social events etc, but then even cannibalism has its bright sides.

Don't live the life of others, is not your problem.

> Don't live the life of others

> is not your problem

You're wrong on both counts. Having an opinion regarding a social media platform, particularly one that can affect the fabric of society, is totally reasonable on a discussion forum hosted on Y Combinator.

It's no more living the life of others than having an opinion on war, politics or famine.

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

#72

Post by nickpsecurity »

austenallred wrote: post #25
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…

The combination of a wildly successful company, not caring about privacy, and a (formerly) bombastic founder. It's the perfect storm for HN shitposting. They have an enormous target on their back and could never do anything right. They got ripped for not enabling safety check recently too. https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/15/facebook-says-it-will-enab...

"The combination of a wildly successful company, not caring about privacy, and a (formerly) bombastic founder. It's the perfect storm for HN shitposting"

Them implementing a feature so poorly that it tells people 6 miles away to confirm they're safe from a building fire is a "perfect storm for HN shitposting" because of the success of the company, privacy issues, and the founder? And not because the feature is a failing in ways causing false alarms and unnecessary stress?

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

bogomipz wrote: post #49
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…

>"Ok, I had to make a throwaway for this because apparently its a heated debate." I am curious why do you feel the need to make a throwaway account because something is a "heated debate."?

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by bogomipz »

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…

>"It feels like everything Facebook is overblown on HN"

And yet you had to create a throwaway account before you could comment.

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

#75

Post by austenallred »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #72
austenallred wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combination of a wildly successful company, not caring about privacy, and a (formerly) bombastic founder. It's the perfect storm for HN shitposting. They have an enormous target on their back and could never do anything right. They got ripped for not enabling safety check recently too. https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/15/facebook-says-it-will-enab...

"The combination of a wildly successful company, not caring about privacy, and a (formerly) bombastic founder. It's the perfect storm for HN shitposting" Them implementing a feature so poorly that it tells people 6 miles away to confirm they're safe from a building fire is a "perfect storm for HN shitposting" because of the success of the company, privacy issues, and the founder? And not because the feature is a fail…

No, because people already hate Facebook so much that when they make a small mistake it gets blown up and turned into a giant news story and hits the front page of HN, filling it up with "delete Facebook!!!" posts.

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

#76

Post by statictype »

SeeDave wrote: post #58
clusmore wrote: post #19

>But by making Safety Check a default expectation Facebook flips the norms of societal behavior and suddenly no one can feel safe unless everyone has manually checked the Facebook box marked “safe”. I'm not buying this statement. Where is the evidence of this? The article features two tweets from nondescript people stating they think the feature spreads unnecessary fear, but features no tweets from people who actuall…

It's not speculation, in my opinion, because the "Safety Check" feature gives the impression that every human being potentially affected by a terrorist attack/natural disaster/unfortunate circumstance is completely and totally unsafe (killed, raped, beaten, burned, and so on) lest they broadcast their safeness to Facebook. It's one thing to scream "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, but is it not equally damaging to imply…

>It's not speculation, in my opinion

If its not speculation, then presumably there is some evidence of people actually complaining about this?

The complaints are all of the form 'I think people may not like it because of the following rational reasons' rather than 'I was in a disaster and failed to mark myself as safe and all my family became worried about me unnecessarily '

For whatever its worth, I've been in disaster areas a couple of times - Facebook asked me to mark myself as safe, I ignored it - and literally nothing happened. Because when there's a disaster, people have better ways of communicating their safety than posting on facebook.

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

#78

Post by rabboRubble »

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 everybody you know on FB see it is a huge stress reducer. It cuts back on the number of "are you okay?" messages you receive during the event when you may not have a lot of battery or a lot of spare brain to dedicate to answering lots of bullshit inquiries.

If he's feeling stressed out because of FB opening the "I'm okay" service in that small area for that catastrophic fire, he's being a self centered jerk. I guarantee that FBs service is helping some poor soul mixed up in that mess.

Edit: The Facebook safety check feature is not unique to Facebook. In many ways it mimics Japan's disaster message board feature. Every teleco in Japan offers this service:

https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/info/disaster/disaster_b...

I really think the author has lived too lucky a life in a place that has not suffered overmuch from disasters. He can't see beyond his own narrow vision.

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

#79

Post by csydas »

whatevthrow31 wrote: post #67
raleighm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If it's because OP's a facebook employee, that should be disclosed w/ the throwaway account.

I'll be honest and say that I'm a former Facebook employee. Probably should have disclosed that originally, but I think it gives even more credit to my Hanlon's razor statement. It's just safer/easier to use a throwaway. I have these opinions in real life, but I try not to be too controversial in writing.

I had written a response to the parent comment on this considering an alternate possibility, but then saw this and deleted it. If you could update your original post, it would help curb some of the meta-discussion on your comment.

As meta comment though, I don't think anything you said is necessarily controversial, it's just debatable. Obviously you need to gauge the potential fallout on your own life, but the comments themselves are fairly innocuous.

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

#80

Post by brightball »

fratlas wrote: post #29
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…

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.

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.
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