Facebook announces a shift to their Safety Check Feature as it now will be trigged by the community instead of the company itself. This means, Facebook users do not need to rely on Facebook to activate the crisis response tool Mashable reports.
The Safety Check feature allows you to tell your family and friends that you are safe during an emergency situation or natural disaster. With the latest update, users will not need to wait for Facebook. If enough people are posing about an incident in a particular area, Facebook will now automatically notify users to see if they’re OK. This differs because a user can mark themselves safe and prompt their friends to do the same, instead of Facebook sending notifications to everyone in that area.
“We believe people closest to a disaster should play a bigger role in deciding when Safety Check most helpful,” says Naomi Gleit, Facebooks’s VP of Social Good. This allows users to take matters in to their own hands and be turned on by the community. People have always used Facebook to check in on each other, but now its made a little easier.
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