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Facebook launched a dedicated tab for Safety Check

Facebook launched a dedicated tab for Safety Check

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Facebook has made a permanent page for Safety Check, its feature for letting others know that you’re safe during an emergency.

The results are pretty eerie. A promotional photo shows the Safety Check page displaying what’s essentially a news feed of catastrophes — including a collapse, a fire, and a typhoon — and people marking themselves safe. You can even explore disasters “around the world.”

It’s a little unsettling, but Facebook seems to have built it out in recognition of the terrorist attacks and extreme weather events that happen on an unfortunately regular basis.

Facebook recently added the ability for people to make donations and offer help during disasters, so creating a hub where users can go to find all of them makes some amount of sense. Previously, the only way to access Safety Check is if you were first prompted to mark yourself safe.

Still, while the intention might be good, the feature is far from perfect. It sometimes gets activated when there isn’t a real emergency, leading to stressed out friends and relatives prodding you with Safety Check requests.

Even with this update, Safety Check is still pretty buried inside the app. On mobile, you have to go to the far right screen and scroll down until you find the icon, mixed in among dozens of other half-forgotten Facebook features. But its creation means that when the feature does get surfaced during a disaster, users will have a lot more to look through.

Facebook says the new section will be rolling out over “the upcoming weeks,” beginning today.