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Safety Check for Brussels
- martin_henk 11y agoWorking in japan all the big companies feature systems like this. You get a e-mail and a call by a automated system. Then you have to respond with your status and if you can come to work :)
- zhte415 11y agoI'm sure Japan has. This is a normal continuity of business protocol, with a cascade down reporting lines. If one fails to respond, cascade to the next layer of reporting down. And have an actual cascade plan in-hand, at home, at work, and on mobile. All businesses should have one, and they are useful for many reasons. Test it annually or more, depending on business. And have results posted back - who responds, who doesn't.
- Dharmakirti 11y agoI'm really sorry for being a Debbie downer here but I find the lack of such initiatives for Turkish (or similar) blasts in past week appalling. Were the lives of the non-European victims not worth FaceBook/HNs attention? Is this selective outrage really suits a rational platform like HackerNews?
- tobltobs 11y agoMaybe the lack lack of such initiatives for Turkish was caused by Facebook being banned in the Turkey.
- yuvadam 11y agoSounds like a pretty lame excuse for a board filled with so-called 'Hackers'.
- miguelrochefort 11y agoTruth is that most first-world citizens, including myself, can only relate to other first-world citizens. If a tragic event hits Nigeria, Pakistan or even Turkey, I will probably ignore it. Hypocrisy? Yes. Surprising? Not really.
- 21 11y agoAnd it's not only Facebook. These Brussels attacks have wall-to-wall coverage on all news stations, including local ones, unlike the Turkish blasts which were covered much less and only by the major outlets.
- miguelrochefort 11y ago> And it's not only Facebook. It goes without saying. My statement was meant to be general.
- tobltobs 11y agoMaybe it is because such blasts are more common in country which wages a civil war against a part of his inhabitants.
- m00dy 11y agobeyin.dll not found
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- guard-of-terra 11y agoBelgium can be looked at this way too. Belgium wages war against ISIS as a part of NATO, and ISIS includes some Belgian citizens, so they wage war against them. It's just they are further away than Kurds. But as we can see, explosion-wise, this makes small difference.
- arien 11y ago
- gokhan 11y agoFacebook did the same for the last Ankara bombing (and for the other two in the last 5 months, if you're interested). When you have bombs blast in your capital each month it's quite hard to expect same amount of interest from these people, even us living in Turkey are getting (sadly) used to it.
- staticelf 11y agoDon't know, I read a lot about the Turkish bombings. Also a lot of complaints that people don't take it as seriously like you do. But I would say people take it seriously and the people complaining just makes everything worse. But for me that lives in EU, a bomb in EU feels much closer than a bomb in Turkey. It is not strange at all?
- jMyles 11y ago> Don't know, I read a lot about the Turkish bombings What point are you making here? If they were covered a lot, why no safety check?
- cr1895 11y agoYou mean like this: https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/ankaraturkey-explosion-mar13-2016/ https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/ankaraturkey-explosion-...
- aorth 11y agoSomething about this bothers me too. I am trying to formulate a way to look at this that gives Facebook the benefit of the doubt, like "anyone you can help is good, even if you can't help them all"... but there's a pessimism in me that says Facebook is being opportunist.
- mjolk 11y agoFor a site this ubiquitous, they don't need to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get a few more page views -- I think this is earnestly meant as a service to others. I don't have a Facebook account, so I can't verify, but at least on that landing page, they're not serving up advertisements.
- mineshaftgap 11y agoWait until people start saying it is not a big deal because more people die from choking on baguettes than terrorism.
- aub3bhat 11y agoFB has enabled safety check several other times, such as floods, earthquakes etc. in India & Nepal. There is nothing about selective outrage.
- mjolk 11y agoIt's not a contest.
- Kiro 11y agoI find the lack of research appalling. You are just presuming this wasn't activated for the Turkish blasts which it was.
- jMyles 11y agoOn some level, it betrays a judgement from facebook about what constitutes "terrorism." I don't think there has ever been a safety check after a hellfire missile from a US drone.
- Numberwang 11y agoWhy are we not showing proportionally even more outrage of drunk driving deaths?
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoa) intent b) number of casualties
- cmdrfred 11y agoIntent is valid point, number of casualties is not. Terrorism is nearly statistically insignificant in the scheme of things. If you are truly concerned about human life buying mosquito nets will offer you much greater ROI compared to any anti-terrorism measures you can envision.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoYou're right, I should have been way more specific. I mean number of casualties in the one specific incident. Terrorist acts often involve tens, if not hundreds, of people, both killed and injured. In the vast majority of cases, a drink-driving accident will affect a handful of people. Nothing about any of this is very rational, but there's something in our collective nature that draws more attention to a single incident involving X casualties than X/Y unrelated incidents each involving Y casualties.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago> Terrorist acts often involve tens, if not hundreds, of people, both killed and injured. Actually terror attacks that harm more than 10 or 100 people, as opposed to less than 10, are a small minority. [0] [0] http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224831.htm http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2013/224831.htm
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- arjie 11y agoEh? It looks like they turned it on for the Ankara blasts[0]. Anyway, the whole thing reminds me of the NPR bit about "The Cost of Free"[1]. People's expectations rapidly change once you offer some of them something. While the main lesson in that story is about charging after offering something for free for many years, there's the second lesson: the reason it was made free was that the Brits were upset that the Americans got free doughnuts. Afterwards, no one got free doughnuts. It's funny. Something that seems clearly like a Pareto improvement ends up not being one because of people's opinions of perceived privilege. 0: https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10156585333855177 https://www.facebook.com/sheryl/posts/10156585333855177 1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-c...
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoThere's a very popular experiment that goes a bit like this. You and another person must share $100. You get to pick the distribution, the other gets to accept or reject. You get one choice. If you pick say $50 each, the other person tends to always accept. If you give him more, he'll accept too. But what if you give yourself $75, and the other $25? If he rejects it, you both get nothing. Turns out, at certain levels (cant remember where), people tend to reject. Which is interesting, because every non-0 figure is a benefit to you. If you get $5 and the other $95, why reject it? You'd get nothing. It's a one-time experiment, you're basically rejecting free money. It turns out that the other guy getting $95 and 'screwing you', is so bad, that you'd rather reject free money than for him to get more than he 'deserves'. Now if this was your enemy, or say someone close to you, sure. But this experiment holds with complete strangers you don't see and will never meet. The notion that someone gets more than you, when normal moral notions suppose you deserve an equal amount, incites people to be vengeful even at the cost of free money.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoThere is no such thing as free money.
- RobertoG 11y ago
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tnuc 11y agoRational platform? Selective outrage? Glenn Greenwald (The guy who broke the Snowden story) sums it up quite nicely. https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/nobody-knows-the-identity-of-the-150-people-killed-by-u-s-in-somalia-but-most-are-certain-they-deserved-it/ https://theintercept.com/2016/03/08/nobody-knows-the-identit...
- tnuc 11y agoCOUGH http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/when-paris-was-attacked-facebook-expanded-its-safety-check-feature-168154 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/when-paris-was-attacke...
- dave2000 11y agoPossibly Europeans are more interested in European news, just like Arab/Asian countries are more interested in their culture's news. I admit when their culture/ethics/religion encroaches upon Europe's, such as with this week's outrage, things get mixed up little. I'm sure the Turkish equivalent of Facebook has its own system.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoCan't speak for Facebook, but as for HNs attention, you didn't submit a story about those blasts. How appalling. If you think something is important and relevant to HN's interests, submit it. It's not 100% everyone else's responsibility to submit things to get votes.
- jglauche 11y ago"Please login to Facebook to access this Safety Check." Can anyone tell me what this is about?
- zrail 11y agohttp://www.cnn.com/2016/03/22/europe/brussels-explosions/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/22/europe/brussels-explosions/
- jglauche 11y agoI am aware of that but what's the facebook site about?
- bartligthart 11y agoIt looks like this. http://cl.ly/243T3c1u1g3M http://cl.ly/243T3c1u1g3M
- 21 11y agoIf you live in that area you login and mark yourself as Safe, so everybody interested can see that instead of you receiving countless questions. Also, I received a push notification on my Android that "Friend was marked as safe" from someone I know who lives there.
- madaxe_again 11y agoIt's a bullshit marketing exercise by facebook to gather traffic as a result of a tragedy. I mean... why don't they do this every day for folks on the daily commute? Getting into your car and driving to work is a far more likely cause of death than a terrorist attack. I suppose they're only being reflective of the general hysteria that happens every time something like this happens.
- TallGuyShort 11y agoWhen there are isolated deaths like traffic accidents, the authorities take pains to notify the next of kin before releasing public details, so you're not seeing the family car on the news wondering if the driver made it. In cases like this, it's all over the news and many people may have an accurate idea of if their loved ones were likely in the affected area. You may call it bullshit, but I've seen a lot of people very relieved to get the news that someone is okay quickly and efficiently like this. It's one of the better things made possible by Facebook.
- _pmf_ 11y agoLog in required; classy.
- Syrup-tan 11y agoIt's a service, of sorts, for registered users to know if any of their friends are in the vicinity, and if they are safe. It also allows users to mark themselves as "safe" if they were in the affected area.
- joefarish 11y agoHow could this feature work without requiring a login?
- Niksko 11y agoEasy. We'd end up with thousands of people named 'Boaty McBoatface' marked as safe
- cr1895 11y agoHow else would you, a Facebook user, alert your Facebook friends using a Facebook feature that tells them you're safe on Facebook? Kinda hard to avoid the log in.
- wyldfire 11y agoIt's not clear from the submitted title nor the page requesting login what the feature is for. I only know now because you've explained it here. EDIT: I'm not the grandparent poster, I wouldn't have written it like that, just trying to explain that I was puzzled about what this all meant.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- elliottcarlson 11y agoI grew up in Belgium, and have family and childhood friends there. I was pleasantly surprised when I got random notifications from Facebook this morning as people I am friends with added themselves to the safety check list - it made it easy for me to quickly know who was OK.
- mikeyouse 11y agoI had the same thought/feeling after the latest Ankara bombing. I didn't even realize a fairly close friend was in Turkey until I got a notification that they were okay. I think it's underappreciated how much smaller the world feels when you see something on the news and nearly immediately know someone affected. It's my hope that this breeds empathy.
- throwaway21816 11y agoHmmm, we should let in more migrants that will fix this
- cballard 11y agoWhat happens if there is another bomb, after someone has reported as "safe"? Are the "safe" statuses updated somehow, since the state of that person is now unknown?
- 0003 11y ago100 falsehoods programmers believe about terrorist attacks.
- quaunaut 11y agoIt's not happened, so I don't know if they already have it in- but it would be incredibly easy to look at the people who were reported as safe and specifically message them to see if they are or not, with a reset and a secondary check. After all, you've got a perfect list of those who already responded.
- sergiotapia 11y ago"Take me in oh tender woman, Take me in, for heaven's sake, Take me in oh tender woman," sighed the vicious snake. This was Reddit's advice three days ago: http://i.imgur.com/M9umIy2g.png http://i.imgur.com/M9umIy2g.png
- randommodnar 11y agoAnd it's still true advice. What you're feeling now is just fear and panic. This is the entire point of a terrorist attack: it's psychological warfare. Make people think they are in grave, imminent danger, to coerce them into some action. If you were actually more likely to die in a terrorist attack than being shot by a toddler in the USA, it probably wouldn't be a terrorist attack, it'd be something more like... an actual war.
- sergiotapia 11y agoPeople in stretchers today would disagree with you.
- randommodnar 11y agoThis is the fear talking. An understandably emotional argument. The people in stretchers dying from all the more common causes of death than terrorism, like being accidentally shot, would like to disagree with you.
- pram 11y agoTerrorists don't kill people, guns do
- randommodnar 11y agoTerrorists kill very few people. People driving cars kill far more people. 9 people are killed in America every day related to distracted driving. In four days distracted and texting Americans kill more people than terrorists did in Belgium. Let's have an uproar about that.
- phamilton 11y agoFacebook is being heavily used by inhabitants in Brussels to communicate right now. I have a friend asking for someone to check on his mother who lives downtown. He can't reach her because the phones systems are completely saturated. He found a neighbor able to go and check on her. For me, being able to log on and see that my friends are OK was helpful beyond description.