Following the terrible terrorist attack in Paris, Facebook is doing its bit to ensure that people can track and know the safety of their near and dear ones in such hard times. According to the critics, Facebook is being biased towards western people, valuing their life more than those in other regions.
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Criticism of Facebook’s timing centers on the twin suicide bombing in the Lebanese capital of Beirut earlier the same week, an attack that, like Paris’, the Islamic State group claimed it carried out.
However, he says Facebook will now starting using the tool during subsequent human disasters. Facebook chose to turn on “Safety Check” after the Paris attacks because the company saw a large number of people using the site to communicate, Facebook Vice President Alex Schultz said in a longer post regarding the company’s decision. Users can then mark that they are safe, generating an update that will be published to their friends, and other people will get a notification or check on updates from everything they know. Before Paris, the tool was only used for five disasters; after the earthquakes in Afghanistan, Chile and Nepal as well as Tropical Cyclone Pam in the South Pacific and Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines.
Safety Check feature was first introduced in 2011 when Tokyo was hit by a Tsunami followed by a nuclear tragedy.
As a result, Facebook has now changed the policy on using Safety Check and plans to activate for “other serious and tragic events in the future”, Schultz said. Previously, Facebook had only activated Safety Check after natural disasters.
He concluded: “Thank you to everyone who has reached out with questions and concerns about this”.
The tool, launched previous year, works by triggering a push notification on devices that are near an affected area. “We want this tool to be available whenever and wherever it can help”, the company said.
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Over four million people have used the tool so far to mark themselves safe following the Paris attacks.
