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That's not an unreasonable stance. I lean the other way. I think, that there is an opportunity, if not a requirement, for fine grained tuning. FB knows a lot ab
by jfoutz 9y ago
That's not an unreasonable stance. I lean the other way. I think, that there is an opportunity, if not a requirement, for fine grained tuning. FB knows a lot about it's users, and can do a better job of predicting who needs the i'm safe button.
Clearly there's a geographic component. Someone in the area, around the time, or in the area regularly. There's probably a fancy combination of, how bad the event was, how widely the event was reported, how close you are to friends, are you traveling to the area, and a bunch of other factors.
Clearly they can handle it dynamically. If you get the "are you ok?" messages, they can add you to likely events, and offer the i'm safe. They can make it easy to add yourself to a disaster event.
There are a lot of people in London. They have the social graph, coupled with location and messaging data. They can do a better job at targeting.
Again, i respect your opinion, but your needs, and my needs are different. I think they can do a better job at meeting both of our needs.
- matt4077 9y agoPart of the problem is that peoples' worries depend not on what Facebook knows, but what those people know: I, for example, know several people in London, but have no idea where in London exactly they life. Now I didn't actually worry because that just didn't make sense considering the numbers involved, but it seems like a very understandable, human mistake to still get alarmed. That could mean displaying people safe without their input, based on location data. But that wouldn't have an impact on the problems the author is concerned about. I think it's essentially a good feature, but this incident may just not have been a good fit.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoThe odds of any given event impacting someone you know is so small as to be incomprehensible. Do you get worried because you heard there was a shooting in a city and it might have included your friends? You probably don't, and before Facebook you wouldn't have given it a second thought. Your friends are more likely to get hit by a car or have a heart attack and you and Facebook would never know and that's ok. Those are the odds and we don't always have to be connected. Yeah, it's a human mistake, but technology should be moving people away from animalistic fears and desires, not pushing them towards it. The easier thing to do would be to realize those odds and realize you can't control these things instead of relying on a social network as a crutch. That may be cynical, but Facebook isn't doing this because they care about you, they're doing it because it's yet another way to get people attached so Facebook can make advertising dollars. That's cynical.
- tluyben2 9y agoMy grandfather has always (my mother has identical stories from when she was young) been deadly afraid when, on tv or newspaper, a city or even country was named and I was there. Like when I was in Seattle and in the news there was some big fire somewhere in the US, he would panic and start calling my mother.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Sephiroth87 9y agoMy partner still get worried calls from her parents any time there ANY accident going on in the UK, and we live in London, so you might be underestimating the impulse of people worrying about their loved ones...
- jamesrcole 9y ago> technology should be moving people away from animalistic fears and desires, not pushing them towards it. Do you have a suggestion for how that could be practically done? > The easier thing to do would be to realize those odds and realize you can't control these things instead of relying on a social network as a crutch. Easier? What the easy way you're suggesting for changing these attitudes and beliefs among the general population?