Facebook criticised for activating its Safety Check feature after Paris attacks
By B.R.
THE morning after the attacks on Paris, an unusual feature popped up on many people’s Facebook accounts. Mine told me that Annamaria, a friend who lives in the French capital, had been “marked as safe”. So, too, had Matt. Another Parisienne, Ania, had not yet received a safe designation, although as she had recently used Facebook to check-in at Durban airport, I wasn’t concerned. My father, as it happened, was also visiting Paris at the time; he did not get the option of having his safety formally declared, it seems (he was fine).
Facebook says that the assault on Paris was the first time it has activated its “Safety Check” feature for a terrorist incident. The service was developed after the 2011 Japanese tsunami so that users or their friends could quickly let people know they are unharmed and it has been activated when other natural disasters have occurred, such as big earthquakes and storms. According toTime, Facebook reports that since Friday “over 4m people used the Safety Check tool to tell their friends they were OK, and over 360m people got notifications that their friends were safe”.
It had not been activated, however, after similar atrocities in places like Nigeria. Indeed, Safety Check was notably absent when Lebanon was subjected to a terrorist attack the day before the events in Paris. That led many to accuse the social network of caring more about European tragedies than African or Middle Eastern ones. As one blogger, Joey Ayoub, put it in a widely shared post:
These have been two horrible nights. The first took the lives of over 40 in Beirut, the second took the lives of over 100 in Paris.
It also seems clear to me that to the world, my people’s deaths in Beirut do not matter as much as my other people’s deaths in Paris.
“We” don’t get a safe button on Facebook. “We” don’t get late night statements from the most powerful men and women alive and millions of online users.
Although Facebook denies it, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that Mr Ayoub has a point. The social network said that “there has to be a first time for trying something new, even in complex and sensitive times, and for us that was Paris”. Fair enough, except it doesn't explain why the hours between the two attacks made such a difference.
Facebook is unlikely to make the mistake again. And despite the ill-feeling, Safety Check is a good example of how technology is making it easier to keep tabs on people in times of crisis. Nowhere is this taken more seriously than among business travellers, especially those who work at the biggest companies. “Duty of care” towards employees is the current buzz phrase among corporate-travel bookers. American Express Global Travel, a big travel-management firm, offers a system that lets its clients keep track of executives’ movements 24 hours a day via a smartphone app and GPS. An executive who used to book Sony’s corporate travel explained to me that when the tsunami hit Japan, the firm used a travel-management company to trace employees who were on the road, even though contact by mobile phone was often impossible. They were quickly accounted for, he says; a decade ago it might have taken an age to discover what had become of them. Other firms also use experienced “destination management companies”, with local knowledge, to help extract employees when nasty situations arise.
It is trite to say that, as business travellers, we should not be spooked by events in Beirut or Paris; that being fearful somehow means that the bad guys have won. Anyone who has found himself in a sticky situation far from home knows the sense of helplessness it can induce. But advances in technology can help when such incidents occur. Just as importantly they can reassure loved ones at home. If we can't hope for business as normal, let us hope for business as close to normal as possible.
