Skip to footer

Critics say Facebook’s Safety Check reveals a double standard

Facebook's Safety Check feature lets people in areas affected by disaster or tragedy quickly let family and friends know that they're safe. Why did the company activate Safety Check after the Paris terror attacks, but not after bombings in Beirut the day before?

|
Facebook
Facebook's Safety Check tool, shown here in a screenshot from facebook.com, lets users in disaster areas quickly notify friends and family of their safety.

In the wake of a terror attack in Paris on Friday, Facebook activated a feature it had only rarely used before. The Safety Check tool allowed people in and around Paris to post a status notifying family and friends that they were safe – a somewhat easier method than calling people individually. 

That was the first time Facebook had ever activated Safety Check for a scenario other than a natural disaster.

In 2014, the company activated Safety Check in the wake of Typhoon Ruby (Hagupit), which stuck the Philippines, and earlier this year Safety Check was used after Tropical Cyclone Pam tore through the South Pacific region. The tool wasn’t officially launched until 2014, but Facebook began working on it following the tsunami and resulting nuclear disaster near Tokyo in 2011.

Alex Schultz, Facebook’s Vice President of Growth, wrote in a post on Saturday that the company has received lots of positive feedback about the ability to receive a notification that a friend is safe.

“I personally have received several from people I know and love and have felt first hand the impact of this tool,” Mr. Schultz wrote.

The Safety Check feature is pretty simple: when a user launches the Facebook app, it uses location services such as GPS and Wi-Fi to determine the user’s location. If the person is in an area that has recently been struck by a natural or human-caused disaster, Facebook offers a big green “I’m safe” button that, when pressed, automatically sends out an update to their social network. Safety Check also tallies how many friends are in the affected area, and how many have checked-in as safe so far. (There’s also a smaller button reading “I’m not in the area,” for those times when Facebook doesn’t get the user’s location quite right.)

The feature wasn’t used for any human-caused disaster until the Paris attacks last week. Some observers felt that it was unfair that Facebook activated the Safety Check for Paris and not, say, for Beirut, which was hit the day before with a double suicide bombing claimed by ISIS.

“Happy to see @Facebook using safety check-in, but can't escape the fact that it wasn't used in #Beirut or other non-Western active crises,” one Twitter user wrote. 

Facebook says it will expand the Safety Check tool’s use going forward, based on the feedback it’s received.

“We chose to activate Safety Check in Paris because we observed a lot of activity on Facebook as the events were unfolding,” Schultz wrote in his post. “This activation will change our policy around Safety Check and when we activate it for other serious and tragic incidents in the future. We want this tool to be available whenever and wherever it can help.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Critics say Facebook’s Safety Check reveals a double standard
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/1116/Critics-say-Facebook-s-Safety-Check-reveals-a-double-standard
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe