After Criticism, Facebook Activates 'Safety Check' for Nigeria

After the Paris terrorist attacks last week, some of you may have noticed among the expressions of grief, shock and support for France on your Facebook and Twitter feeds a certain amount of criticism over what one might call selective empathy, noting the far more muted reaction to suicide bombings killing at least 43 people in Beirut, Lebanon, just a day before the Paris attacks.

Where are the social media apps to change people’s profile pics to the colors of the Lebanon flag in the aftermath of the #BeirutAttacks?

— Jason Chesnut (@crazypastor) November 15, 2015

Some of that criticism was levied at Facebook for activating its "Safety Check" feature for the horrific events in Paris but not for Beirut. Safety Check asks users in a danger zone to indicate they're safe so their friends on the social media network can rest assured.

And to answer many comments: yes, global outrage is selective. No Facebook safety check or Obama address for #Beirut yesterday.Sad but true.

— Mohamed El Dahshan (@eldahshan) November 14, 2015

Facebook took the criticism to heart. Last night, it activated Safety Check in Nigeria after explosions killed more than 30 people and injured dozens more in the city of Yola.

"After the Paris attacks last week, we made the decision to use Safety Check for more tragic events like this going forward," Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. "We're now working quickly to develop criteria for the new policy and determine when and how this service can be most useful." (Full post below.)

Besides Safety Check, Facebook also took heat for offering users a filter that allowed them to change their profile picture to the colors of the French flag.

Karen North, director of USC Annenberg's digital social media program, told KQED's Mina Kim on Monday that deciding when to employ such filters won't be easy.

"Is Facebook now going to have to make a decision on every single event that people care about, and decide if this one warrants a filter to show support?” North said.

She said the company should instead allow people to use filters in much the same way that Instagram and some other photo services use them.

“If you could, for example, select any flag at any time, then it would be in the hands of individuals who want to use filters rather than having Facebook make the political decision of when those filters should become available."

Here's Mark Zuckerberg's full post about the Nigeria safety check:

We've activated Safety Check again after the bombing in Nigeria this evening.

After the Paris attacks last week, we made the decision to use Safety Check for more tragic events like this going forward. We're now working quickly to develop criteria for the new policy and determine when and how this service can be most useful.

Unfortunately, these kinds of events are all too common, so I won't post about all of them. A loss of human life anywhere is a tragedy, and we're committed to doing our part to help people in more of these situations.

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.

Deaths from war are lower than ever, murder rates are generally dropping around the world, and -- although it's hard to believe -- even terrorist attacks are declining.

Please don't let a small minority of extremists make you pessimistic about our future.

Every member of our community spreads empathy and understanding on a daily basis. We are all connecting the world together. And if we all do our part, then one day there may no longer be attacks like this.

Mina Kim contributed to this report.