Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms
Ok, I had to make a throwaway for this because apparently its a heated debate.<p>Why does everything Facebook do have to be so heavily criticized?<p>Safety Check is a wonderful feature. If I remember correctly, it started off as an internal hackathon project that got turned into a full feature. They get shit if they turn it on (here), and if they don&#x27;t turn it on (past tragedies where they failed to turn it on).<p>Why does everything Facebook do turn into a riot? After years in the industry, 95% of things that are &quot;bad&quot; that come out of big companies end up being well meaning and just look malicious without context. Hanlon&#x27;s razor is real.<p>Yeah, Facebook has to fund all this somehow. Yeah, they are going to make their ad space extremely valuable with all the information they have. They don&#x27;t sell your raw data. They sell access to you like the rest of the industry.<p>Those creepy ads that you saw based on some conversation you had? Turns out that they&#x27;re NOT listening to your mic or whatever. It&#x27;s either confirmation bias or something you&#x27;re not thinking about.<p>Those friends that they suggest with a new account? Turns out your friends posted pictures of you on Facebook, and Facebook knows how to do facial recognition.<p>It feels like everything Facebook is overblown on HN. What am I missing?<p>Edit: I should have said this originally, but I&#x27;m a former Facebook employee, now at another big tech company. I try not to be too controversial in writing, which is why I made a throwaway.