On: Facebook’s Safety Check is a stress-inducing flip of social norms

[_lqaf]

> I don't really buy the argument that you would just assume someone is safe before

The problem is that it doesn't matter how you react to the feature. The problem is how groups of people react to it.

This isn't much different than saying you'd calmly walk to the exit if caught in a fire in a club. Even assuming you evaluate your own behavior in that situation correctly, it has zero effect on everyone else.

> There's really no way to correctly do this without having really accurate and very up to date information about the people using Facebook, which isn't always possible.

So maybe if you can't do something reliably, and there are risks to getting it wrong, the proper response isn't 'hold my beer?'

[yladiz → _lqaf]

> So maybe if you can't do something reliably, and there are risks to getting it wrong, the proper response isn't 'hold my beer?'

Is the argument that this shouldn't be done because it can't be perfect?

[_lqaf → yladiz]

No, it is not. I meant what I wrote.

[yladiz → _lqaf]

Let me put it another way: I don't understand your argument, so I clarified and asked if your argument was X. You said it's not, so what is your argument?

[_lqaf → yladiz]

The argument is that, based on the news reports, the system breaks often enough to risk causing more panic and alarm than it solves, so instead of doubling down on a bad idea, perhaps the right course of action is to reconsider the feature.

You seemed to want my argument to be some absurdly rigid form of "ship only on perfect performance". It isn't - it is more that treating misfires and the predictable, if irrational, responses something like this will generate in actual emergencies as if they were as trivial as, say, bad ad targeting is irresponsible and should be given substantially more thought.