Facebook used its Social Good Forum in New York Thursday to introduce several tools for its users in the areas of crisis response and charitable giving.
Vice president of social good Naomi Gleit detailed all of the updates and new features in a Newsroom post:
Safety Check
Facebook introduced Safety Check in October 2014 as a way for users in areas experiencing natural disasters or other crisis situations to let their friends and families know they are safe.
The tool was used during situations including the September 2015 earthquakes in Nepal; the November 2015 terrorist bombing in Yola, Nigeria; the terrorist bombings in Brussels in March; and another terrorist bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, later that month.
And in June, the social network announced the development of a tool enabling non-engineering employees to activate Safety Check and an internal Messenger bot for employees to monitor the process. On Thursday, Facebook announced that Safety Check will now be triggered by its user community instead of by employees, and Gleit wrote:
People use Facebook to let friends and family know they?re okay during a crisis. We launched Safety Check in 2014 to make this easier. Initially, Facebook decided when Safety Check was activated, but our goal has always been to make it more useful for people for more types of incidents. We believe people closest to a disaster should play a bigger role in deciding when Safety Check is most helpful. So today, Safety Check will be turned on by...