Facebook ‘Community Help’ tool unveiled

The social network made the announcements recently in New York at its Social Good Forum, a first-of-its-kind event it hopes to repeat in coming years. The company has dozens of engineers who work on its relatively new ‘social good’ team creating tools for users to help their friends.

A tool called ‘Safety Check’ lets Facebook users mark themselves safe during a crisis, whether that’s a natural disaster, bombing or something else. At first, Facebook activated the tool in areas where disaster struck. Now, Facebook says it will stop its own activations, handing it off to users instead. How? When a lot of people are posting about an incident, they might get a notification to let friends know they are OK, using safety check. If they do, they can invite other friends to do the same. 

Beginning early next year, a tool called ‘Community Help’ will let users offer and receive shelter, food or other types of help during crises. People have already been doing this on Facebook and Twitter, using hashtags such as #PorteOuverte (open door) after last year’s attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead. But it was often difficult to pair up. The new feature aims to streamline this. People will be able to select categories to get or offer help with, such as food and water, transportation, baby items or shelter. Once they do, they can use Facebook Messenger to arrange the details. 

People can add donation buttons to their Facebook Live videos to raise money — but only for actual charities, not a dream vacation.