Facebook adds tools for finding help to Safety Check feature

Safety Check lets users in a certain geographic area mark themselves as safe after disasters, such as the earthquake in Nepal or terrorist attacks in Paris, giving friends and family members relief from worry about whether someone was affected.

The new Community Help tool will let users post requests for assistance or offers of help from within Safety Check, and can be filtered by category and location, according to Preethi Chethan, a product designer at Facebook.

Facebook has since implemented these alerts for many events, including some that didn’t seem to merit the warning, like an explosion in Bangkok that caused a panic when Safety Check was activated, but turned out to be small firecracker bombs as part of a protest that caused no injuries.

Community Help will be initiated for natural disasters and accidents, like earthquakes or building fires, according to a blog post by Naomi Gleit, a Facebook vice president.