In a world of disasters, sympathy becomes a dilemma for Facebook
FACEBOOK is not only the world’s biggest social network, but also its biggest human network. And this week it learnt the legendary Spider-Man mantra: “With great power comes great responsibility”.
With more than 1.5 billion subscribers, it is no longer merely a platform for family and friends to share trivia or embarrass each other with inappropriate public postings. It is becoming a barometer of human activity, and the first port of call for making, remaking and breaking connections.
A year ago, it introduced Safety Check, a feature designed for people at the scene of a disaster to let contacts know they are safe. It was first deployed after the earthquake in Nepal in April this year. Since then, it has been triggered by earthquakes in Afghanistan and Chile, Cyclone Pam in the South Pacific and Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines.
When it was activated during the Paris attacks last week — the first time for an act of terror — Facebook was lambasted for ignoring bombings in Lebanon the day before. That set a bandwagon in motion from victims of violence and their sympathisers across the geopolitical spectrum, with Facebook slammed for ignoring events such as a massacre of Turks in Ankara, knife attacks on Jews in Israel, and the killing of 147 Kenyan students at Garissa University.
Facebook was clearly stung by the criticism. Its opportunity to make amends came just days later, when a Boko Haram suicide bombing killed more than 30 in the Nigerian city of Yola.
“We’ve activated Safety Check again after the bombing in Nigeria,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “After the Paris attacks last week, we made the decision to use Safety Check for more tragic events like this. We’re working quickly to develop criteria for the new policy and determine when and how this service can be most useful.” The unspoken message was the extent to which Facebook had woken up to its central role in geopolitics.
This responsibility extends to the way it deploys all social responsibility initiatives. A project called Internet.org, aimed at connecting the two-thirds of the global population that is not on the internet, almost came unstuck on the rocks of this responsibility. It started out as an app that gives smartphone users in emerging markets free access to certain online properties. It came in for massive criticism for supposedly trying to lock new users into Facebook’s version of the internet. It was then relaunched as a product called Free Basics by Facebook, and allowed developers to submit their own content.
This week, during the AfricaCom telecommunications congress in Cape Town, Facebook revealed that Internet.org would partner with the Praekelt Foundation, an incubator for mobile technology aimed at improving the wellbeing of people living in poverty. Founder Gustav Praekelt said the Free Basics incubator would help developers working on health, education, agriculture, financial inclusion and gender services.
One of the first reactions on Twitter was an attack for dictating what should go into Free Basics. Markku Mäkeläinen, head of global operator partnerships at Facebook and a speaker at AfricaCom, was baffled: “When we started, we curated services we felt were transformative. We got some criticism for choosing which services go on the platform, so we listened and opened it up. We think it’s an amazing opportunity for developers to achieve reach.”
Noble goals, noble initiatives. Given its global reach, however, every public act by Facebook will in future come under the microscope of responsibility.
Goldstuck is the founder of World Wide Worx and editor-inchief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @art2gee.