Facebook users who were in Paris during the Friday night terror attacks were able to notify friends and family that they were safe through the site’s “Safety Check” tool.
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The Facebook Safety Check detects users in the area of a mass casualty event and asks them to “check in” that they are safe.
Facebook’s vice president of growth, Alex Schultz took to the social media network and mentioned that Facebook’s Safety Check feature was activated for a human disaster, as against a natural disaster, for the first time.
A spokesperson for Facebook said that she did not have the numbers on hand of how many users marked safe that were in Paris as the feature had just been activated by the company.
Company officials are “shocked and saddened” by the Paris attacks, the company said in a statement late Friday. This activation will change our policy around Safety Check and when we activate it for other serious and tragic incidents in the future.
The “Safety Check” feature has been used by almost 360 million people in Paris, to send safety status updates to tell their Facebook contacts that they are safe.
Facebook users the world over are showing their solidarity with the people of Paris by overlaying the colours of the French flag on their profile pictures. “We’re going to continue working to make [Safety Check] better and more useful”, he wrote.
The easiest way of doing it is to find someone in your Facebook news feed using the feature – and you should see a button underneath saying “Try It”.
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A representative wrote, “There has to be a first time for trying something new, even in complex and sensitive times, and for us that was Paris”. But Safety Check is activated by Facebook, which means it can (and should) be used when needed. “We hope to never be confronted with a situation like this again, but if we are, we are of course open to activating the tool given how reassuring it has been for people in Paris”.
