A week after Facebook activated its Safety Check feature in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, the social network is facing new criticism for not activating the feature in Mali after gunmen took more than hundred people hostage in an attack on a Radisson Blu Hotel.
Until last week, Facebook had only used the feature during natural disasters like Hurricane Patricia and after earthquakes in Nepal and Chile. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Saturday the company would use tool in “more human disasters” going forward.
At the time, he was responding to critics who questioned why the tool had not been used after bombings in Beirut, Lebanon and other areas. “We care about all people equally, and we will work hard to help people suffering in as many of these situations as we can,” he wrote.
This left many Facebook users confused about the company’s decision to not activate the feature in Mali Friday, after gunmen took more than 150HOTEL
guests and employees hostage in an attack that left 27 people dead. Others questioned why Facebook did not release a special profile photo filter like it did after the Paris attacks. (The feature was also used after the U.S Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling in June and during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Facebook HQ in September.
The company also activated the feature in Nigeria Wednesday, after 32 people were killed in a bombing in the city of Yola.
When reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson directed Mashable to an earlier statement from Facebook head of growth Alex Schultz.
Schultz previously explained some of the reasoning behind the decision to activate the feature in Paris and the plan to use it in future non-natural disaster emergencies. “We chose to activate Safety Check in Paris because we observed a lot of activity on Facebook as the events were unfolding,” he wrote in a post on Facebook’s Safety page Saturday.
“This activation will change our policy around Safety Check and when we activate it for other serious and tragic incidents in the future. We want this tool to be available whenever and wherever it can help.”
Schultz, however, offered few specifics on what criteria the company would take into account for future incidents. “During an ongoing crisis, like war or epidemic, Safety Check in its current form is not that useful for people: Because there isn’t a clear start or end point and, unfortunately, it’s impossible to know when someone is truly ‘safe.’
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Source: Mashable