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Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

(www.nytimes.com)
623 points franzb | 1 comments | 14 Nov 15 00:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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leothekim ◴[14 Nov 15 00:44 UTC] No.10563638[source]▶
Facebook has enabled their safety check feature:

https://www.facebook.com/safetycheck/paris_terror_attacks/

replies(1): >>10564010 #
eveningcoffee ◴[14 Nov 15 01:59 UTC] No.10564010[source]▶
What is this?
replies(1): >>10564020 #
jacquesm ◴[14 Nov 15 02:02 UTC] No.10564020[source]▶
A way to let others know you're safe even if you can't get through to them personally.
replies(1): >>10564095 #
Asbostos ◴[14 Nov 15 02:20 UTC] No.10564095[source]▶
Does that have any value beyond reinforcing people's irrational fear of mass deaths? What if you let your family know you're not one of the 100 killed in this attack then die as one of the 600 murdered in France each year by common crime?

I saw this happen with the London bombings. A colleague was almost in tears because her son lived in London and she couldn't contact him on the phone. It turned out he was fine, as approximately everybody else in the city was too.

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jtblin ◴[14 Nov 15 02:54 UTC] No.10564202[source]▶
I found it valuable to know that my friends and family in Paris are safe, so I'm grateful to FB for doing that. OTH It saddens me and make me wonder what kind of world we live in for FB to release such a feature.
replies(1): >>10564257 #
Asbostos ◴[14 Nov 15 03:14 UTC] No.10564257[source]▶
You didn't need Facebook to tell you that. You could have just assumed it was true based on the enormous population of Paris (2 million) and the small number of deaths in this incident (100-200).
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1. jacquesm ◴[14 Nov 15 03:25 UTC] No.10564295[source]▶
It's a matter of geometry and not loading up the phone lines with un-necessary calls.

If 1,000,000 people try to figure out whether the 1 person they know in a city of 2,000,000 are ok within a very short time-frame then the phone network will stop functioning.

A place to post a simple 'I'm ok' will cut down tremendously on the number of calls that will then still need to be made. Unfortunately (1) not everybody has facebook and (2) a 'no show' will now certainly lead to a phonecall when before it would be assumed the person was ok so I'm not sure whether it helps or not but the basic idea is probably a good one. It would be even better if this functionality was available outside of having a facebook account.