Facebook announced an update to their Safety Check feature, called Community Help. This update enables users to find and give help after a crisis, such as food, shelter and transportation.
The feature will only be available after Safety Check is activated, which relies on two factors:
- Facebook will be alerted by global crisis reporting agencies that an incident has occurred, prompting the Facebook team to monitor for posts about incidents in the area.
- If a lot of Facebook users are talking about the incident, they may be prompted to mark themselves as safe.
Safety check launched in 2014 after the Facebook team notice that users took to Facebook to notify friends and family regarding their well being after a crisis. In a blog post by VP Social Good Naomi Gleit, she notes that the Safety Check feature has since “been activated hundreds of times”.
As of today, if an incident is classified as natural or accidental disaster, Community Help feature will be visible. Users can find or give help, as well as directly message others to connect by using Safety Check. Posts can be viewed by category and location, making it easier for people to find the help they need.
In the blog post, Facebook said that they developed Community Help based on learning about user behaviour. “We saw the community do this on their own through Groups and posts, like in the aftermath of the flooding in Chennai, India, in December 2015, but we knew we could do more. We also talked with experts, humanitarian relief organizations and our own in-the-field researchers to learn how to make it easier for people to find and give help.”
Community Help will initially be available only for natural and accidental incidents, such as an earthquake or building fire, and piloted for the next couple of weeks in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Saudi Arabia. Facebook will be learning about how users use the feature and make improvements before rolling it out to all countries, and including additional types of incidents.
Original post on Facebook Newsroom.
