Facebook has rolled out a new Community Help feature to Safety Check which allows users to users to either offer or locate assistance such as food, shelter or transportation during times of crisis. The social network had launched the Safety Check feature in 2014 that enables users to mark them safe thereby letting their friends and family know they were safe during natural disasters.
This feature has been used during natural calamities and terrorists attacks across the world. For starters, the Community Help service is being rolled out in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Saudi Arabia. The feature will at first be used for natural disasters and incidents such as building fires, not for mass shootings or bombings. It must be noted that for the community to use Community Help after an incident, Safety Check must first be activated.
For Safety Check to activate, two things need to happen:
- First, global crisis reporting agencies NC4 and iJET International alert Facebook that an incident has occurred and give it a title, and we begin monitoring for posts about the incident in the area.
- Second, if a lot of people are talking about the incident, they may be prompted to mark themselves safe, and invite others to do the same.
As the feature is already live, if an incident is a natural or accidental disaster, people will see Community Help. They can find or give help, and message others directly to connect from within Safety Check. Facebook plans to roll it out more broadly in coming weeks and months.