By then, I had left my apartment, clutching my phone with a melancholy grip, refreshing my Facebook feed every minute. “Just got on TV trying to figure out what the hell happened.”Ībout an hour after news reports of the attacks broke, Facebook activated its Safety Check, a feature previously applied only to earthquakes and typhoons.
FACEBOOK MARKED SAFE UPDATE
I scroll my newsfeed reading one status update after another from friends responding to people like me, frantic and checking on loved ones. I am the one who has to ping my friends in Paris, who has to text my partner, asking him to check up on our friends whose numbers I don’t have and who live in the neighborhoods the attackers targeted. My phone doesn’t beep with messages from my family as it did last year when Gaza was being bombed by Israel. And last year when the Israeli military attacked Gaza, where my father’s family is from and where I have half-brothers and -sisters, cousins and aunts, the idea of their checking in on Facebook regarding their safety is a thought that never would have crossed my mind, much less their minds. None of them lived in the working-class district of Burj al-Barajneh where the suicide bombings took place. Last Thursday in Beirut, when the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for yet another one of its signature soft-targeted attacks, I didn’t rush to social media to ascertain the safety of my friends or family. Safety Check allows users to check in online, letting users know if our friends were in the affected area of a disaster. Its Safety Check feature is meant to “connect friends and loved ones during a natural disaster,” according to the company. I know they are, because that’s what Facebook tells me. In Paris, a place I called home for several years, my friends are all safe.