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IN THE AFTERMATH of the two earthquakes in Nepal, Facebook set up a safety check function to allow users caught up in the tragedy to alert their family and friends to their safety with a quick status update.
If Facebook believes your location to be near the earthquake in Kathmandu, you are prompted to mark yourself as ‘safe’, if applicable. Friends are then notified if you are affected but safe.
Many have commended Facebook for the helpful tool. People can also update on a friend’s behalf if they have heard from them but they personally have no internet access.
Facebook developed the tool after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan as a fast way to let friends and family know they are safe. However, some users have been turning it into a joke, and checking in as safe despite being clearly in Ireland and not Nepal.
Many have called it disrespectful to be so far from the earthquake disaster zone, which claimed the lives of 8,200 people, claiming that the fake check-ins dilute the feature for those it could be genuinely useful to.
But hey, it can be used for something…
Facebook is also calling for donations to the Nepal Earthquake Relief, with over €15 million raised so far.
Originally published on DailyEdge.ie.
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I doubt it’s just Irish idiots doing this.
It’s a whole global idiocy thing.
Not gona lie, I marked myself safe, had no idea what it was. Nor had any knowledge of what happened in Nepal and coundnt undo it or remove it. On a lighter note people “unfriending ” “friends” on Facebook is rather amusing, probably indicates you were never their friend in the first place..
Outrage over nothing on Twitter. Say it ain’t so.
I don’t consider myself old but it feels like a lifetime ago since a stupid joke between friends stayed there and didn’t become fodder for the perpetually offended.
My outrage is intensifying. Soon I will reach peak SJW.
I was on Reddit earlier and saw two SJWs having it out over whether or not a mixed race Ms Universe representative from Japan was a good thing from a race angle, or a travesty from a feminist angle. But I suppose everyone needs a hobby.
Ah here, two of my american friends and a few English friends also did it, but any excuse for a bit of national self hatred….
Jesus people are shite
It’s only women complaining.
Isin’t it Ironic people using Twitter, to tell their twitter friends/followers that they are unfriending their Facebook friends/followers. #much ado about nothing..
Oh FFS! do people not have anything real to be getting upset about?
Children are dead beneath tonnes of rubble. Families wiped out.
Yeah, suppose it’s fine to mock the system that is helping families ensure their loved ones are safe. Absolute idiots.
Of course it’s fine. It doesn’t negatively affect anyone in any way whatsoever.
@daniel what system is that exactly, using social media and a diseaster to increase traffic and advertising revenue. If they really wanted they could donate not ask for 15million plus have people on the ground.
Havin’ the bantz, eh? Gas craic the lot of them. Gas craic altogether.
/sarcasm.
I for one am sooooo outraged by these sheep doing the same unfunny thing. I will let everyone know that I am outraged because I too am a sheep like the other outraged people.
Nobody I know has sunk that low. It says a lot about you & the company you keep if you know people doing this.
That’s just nepalling
Nice…..
Where’s the Leitrim safety check in?
Whomever did this you should be ashamed stone cold indifference to human beings suffering
It’s actually some sort of Facebook glitch as far as I’ve heard, not people trying to be funny.
Every worthless idiot thinks their opinion matters nowadays, telling the whole internet, and I include myself in that.
Is it not more of a Facebook problem? If it (wrongly) identifies someone as being at that location when they are clearly not, then is it also possible that Facebook marks them safe when they next use it ..stands to reason that they must be safe if they are on Facebook!!!
And this is one of the reasons we’re loved the whole world over, no doubt
have your say