Facebook adds Safety Check for the Nigeria bombing, says Mark Zuckerberg

After outrage on social media about Paris being favoured from among Baghdad and Beirut, Facebook was quick to clarify that the Safety Check feature is an experiment that was meant for natural calamities. However, in a post on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg added, “We’ve activated Safety Check again after the bombing in Nigeria this evening.” He went on to add that since the Paris attacks that occurred last week, Facebook has decided to use the Safety Check feature for more manmade tragic events such as terrorist strikes that happened in Paris and the bombing in Nigeria. In his post, Zuckerberg added that since events of these kinds occur rather frequently, he won’t be posting about each one of them. He added that “In times like this, it’s important to remind ourselves that despite the alarming frequency of these terrible events, violence is actually at an all-time low in history and continues to decline.” In a note of encouragement, Zuckerberg said that deaths occurring due to war are comparatively lower than ever. He added that murder rates have been going down around the world. Although that’s hard to believe, he said said terrorist attacks are also declining. Reassuring the Facebook community, he said, “Please don’t let a small minority of extremists make you pessimistic about our future.” In the wake of the deadliest attack on Europe in over a decade that killed at least 129 people and injured many more, millions of people used Facebook’s Safety Check tool to tell their friends they were safe. But many users on the social media platform criticised Facebook for not mobilising the same safety function during other attacks around the world, especially after suicide bombings in Beirut a day earlier that killed at least 43 people. Facebook’s safety check feature was launched in October 2014.