UPDATED: When is the Facebook Safety Check Activated?

Manchester’s tragedy on May 22 might have been geographically further from London than the Westminster attack just two months before but its scale that ultimately left 22 dead made many people across the world fear for friends in the area. Fortunately Facebook gave us the ability to check who had “marked themselves as safe” and ask others in the area who had not yet done so.

At Ariana Grande’s concert her teenage fans attending without guardians presented a perfect case where this kind of notification could be a valuable tool for a whole network of shocked friends and relatives to be assured of their safety at the press of a button rather than a frenzy of calls and texts.

But the feature isn’t perfect yet as the check is often activated a duration after an event and relies on people voluntarily using their phones after a shocking situation when other matters take priority like calling for help. Just how effective is this system and who controls it?

 

The Westminster Attack

When the check was activated in Westminster Londoners found their phones receiving a constant feed of who was safe. That brief notification was how many of us first heard about the dreadful incident on March 22, 2017.

I was in a car heading to a flat viewing and quickly skimmed the BBC News website to establish just what had gone on. Did I need to ring friends and family? Was my mum whom I had just seen to the station alright and did she need to know I was unharmed? While the events of that day were shocking they could have been a much-worse 7/7 style nightmare. Nevertheless, the impact spread quickly through a population that is now much more closely tied to digital media than during the 7/7/ attacks 12 years earlier.

Safety Check – “work in progress?”

Facebook Safety Check was released October 15, 2014. It was inspired by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, when victims were able to connect through social media. In June 2016 Facebook decided to make Safety Check community-activated, meaning it is triggered by a large number of people posting about the same event. While this change makes the system fairer and quicker, determining the algorithm to activate it was a difficult job. Alex Schultz of Facebook Analytics admitted that overall the Safety Check was a “work in progress.”

A checking system like this is only so effective. At the end of 2016, Facebook had 1.86 billion monthly active users. While this is about a quarter of the world’s population it certainly isn’t everybody. Its gaps get worse if your sister has run out of battery or a number of your friends simply don’t see the point of checking in as “safe.”

Digital Connection in a Crisis

I didn’t mark myself as safe immediately because it didn’t seem necessary. The Facebook Safety Check feature often seems a rather underhand ploy by a major company to position themselves as an essential service. They have your personal data and access to all your profile’s content but apparently that’s fine because they care about you. I had no reason to be in Westminster itself although I was in fact within the wider City of Westminster. But then someone used the feature to “ask” if I was safe. It was then easy for me to press the “safe” button presented to me on my phone.

Various people ”liked” the notification that I was safe. One I had met twice and not spoken to for years, another in Sweden and a friend in New Zealand. I felt really quite touched that people I had such a passing connection to actually cared for my safety despite the fact I really didn’t feel I was in any peril.

That is the power of Safety Check in bringing people together in times of crisis. My far-flung friends were more worried about people in London than I was because they had only the media to go by. Ultimately, the Safety Check is a reassurance. Half your friends may be dauntingly “Not yet marked safe” but having your family and closest contacts checking in gives you a final confirmation to avoid doubt.

When is Safety Check Not Activated?

While shocking, Westminster was a minor attack compared to many atrocities across the world. Who really gets to decide when the check is activated, and how can Facebook anticipate when a current event is going to be a crisis? When does a hit-and-run become an act of terror?

The US National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism reports that in 2015 “more than 55% of all attacks took place in five countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria).” According to Statista there are more active Facebook users in India, with 195 million, than in any other country. The number of fatalities there through terrorist incidents in 2015 was 174 including civilians, security personnel and terrorists, according to the website South Asia Terrorism Portal.

However, Facebook Safety Check has never been activated for an Indian terror attack – it has only been triggered twice in India and each time it was for a natural disaster. That is despite reported attacks like the Jammu Police Station Attack in March 2015 in which six were killed and a shooting in Gurdaspur where 10 died. What makes this issue so difficult is placing a value on human life. Should countries with more terrorist attacks have less coverage than those with fewer? Similar issues were raised bv the “Je Suis” controversy, as attacks in Western countries cause so much more shock and sympathy than the more frequent attacks in large parts of Asia.

Nevertheless, Paris in November 2015 was the first time Safety Check was activated for a violent, non-natural disaster. But the check was still not activated for an attack in Nagrota, India, on November 29, 2016. That attack was on an army base, suggesting that soldiers who face danger professionally do not get the same treatment as Western civilians. Would it be activated in a war? We recently saw the destruction of Aleppo via Twitter but Facebook remains banned in Syria. The digitisation of conflict will continue to be a developing theme.

The Critics

Facebook Safety Check always manages to spark online debate as ego conflicts with high emotions. One Facebook user posted: “All these people checking in as safe, do us a favour! You’re not even in London!!!” Clearly they didn’t understand just how connected to London the whole country is.

Another responded to such outbursts with: “Wow, so many people getting annoyed by people checking-in safe…OMG, a few more notifications on your phone, that’s SO annoying but most importantly: It’s stealing your 5 min of fame on someone else’s timeline… Its all about you, right?” He concluded sarcastically by accusing concerned relatives: “…How DARE you care.”

Of course plenty of us still think Facebook doesn’t have to govern every element of our existence. With the majority of our friends “not marked” 24 hours later, it is clear for the time being that Facebook has yet to digitise our deaths quite as much as our lives.

– Stewart Vickers @VickHellfire

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