Initially designed to connect people during natural disasters, Facebook activated its Safety Check tool to enable those affected by the Paris attacks to let people at home know they were ok.
As the numbers of people dead and injured grew, Facebook acted quickly but still copped some criticism for not enabling it for other terrorist attacks.
In a response to critics, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social media site would not activate the feature for a wider range of incidents. In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote, “We care about all people equally, and we will work hard to help people suffering in as many of these situations as we can.”
The company has certain criteria for activating the feature based on “scope, scale and impact”, but on this occasion the decision to activate the feature was made after discussions with staff in Paris.
While we all hope that we can travel freely without incident, it is important to recognise that for a number of reasons, this isn’t always possible.
To find out more about Facebook’s Safety Check read our article ‘Facebook’s feature for travellers’.