Coverage: Facebook, Twitter connect users after Paris attacks

Paris, known for being the City of Lights and love, was shaken over the weekend after a series of deadly terror attacks. As details of the tragedy unfolded throughout the night, people took to their social media pages to look for updates not only about the news but their loved ones’ safety.

The two most prominent tools for connecting with Paris were Facebook, which launched its Safety Check feature, and Twitter, where users used hashtags to provide minute-by-minute updates. Solidarity with Paris continues to spread on social media, with Facebook launching a profile picture filter that transposes the French flag on to users’ photos.

Christian de Looper of Tech Times explained how Facebook played a role in this weekend’s tragedy:

Following a series of shootings and bombings in Paris, social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are helping users located in Paris post about their safety and allowing users outside of Paris show solidarity with victims of the attack.

The attack took place late Friday evening in the French capital, with terrorists targeting six sites around the city, including holding around 100 hostages at the Bataclan concert hall, where American blues band Eagles of Death Metal were playing. A bombing also took place near the French sports stadium, the Stade de France. In total, there were 123 reported deaths, 352 reported injured, with at least 99 of those being seriously injured.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, and a series of raids have been conducted in Belgium in connection with the incident.

Facebook’s tool is called Safety Check, and it allows users located in Paris to mark themselves and others they might be with as “safe.” Once they have been marked as safe, their friends will be notified and users on Facebook can head to the app to make sure their friends are ok. The tool comes as officials in Paris are warning residents to stay indoors, with the attack being the deadliest on French soil since World War II and the deadliest on Western soil since September 11, 2001.

Facebook is also allowing users to post a French flag filter to their profile picture to show solidarity with the victims of the attack and with the people of France in general.

The Wall Street Journal’s Deepa Seetharaman summed up how social media companies helped connect people following the attacks:

Social-media companies Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. provided new tools allowing people around the world to track and discuss the violent attacks in Paris on Friday with unprecedented speed and depth.

Facebook activated its “Safety Check” feature Friday, allowing the site’s users in the area of the attacks to mark themselves as safe on their profiles. This marked the first time the tool was enabled for violent attacks. Twitter’s news-curation tab, known as “Moments,” featured tweets, images and videos from news agencies and bystanders that showed snippets of the attacks’ aftermath.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it is making international calls to France from its Hangouts mobile communication app free through the weekend, so people can check on the status of friends and relatives. The free calls can be made through Google’s Hangouts app on Android phones and iPhones.

On Twitter, Parisians used the hashtag “#PorteOuverte”—or “open door” in French—to offer shelter to stranded visitors. On Periscope, the live-streaming app owned by Twitter, a user posted a video of the scene around the Bataclan concert hall, the site of one of the attacks. Other users posted live videos of their reaction to the violence, often with police sirens blaring in the background.

“My thoughts are with everyone in Paris tonight,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page. “Violence like this has no place in any city or country in the world. We’ve activated Safety Check, so if you’re in Paris you can mark yourself safe or check on your friends and family.”

Ellie Zolfagharifard and Cheyenne Macdonald of The Daily Mail detailed how Facebook’s safety check worked and Uber and AirBnB also helped users over the weekend:

The Facebook ‘Safety Check’ tool lets you input whether you are safe or not in the affected area.

Users can then also see how other friends and family in an affected area are doing and can mark people as ‘safe’. If Facebook notices that you are using a device in an affected area in Paris, it will ask: ‘Are you safe?’

Your location is determined by the city listed in your profile, you last location if you use the Nearby Friends product or the city where you are using the internet. It can be used around the world on Android, iOS, feature phone and on computers.

If you’re not in the area, you can select ‘I’m not in the area.’ And if you’re in the area but are okay, you can select ‘I’m safe.’

This will send out a notification and News Feed story with your update. Friends can then also mark you as ‘safe’, so they know they don’t have to worry. The tool can also be used to keep track of friends in an affected area in the French capital.

Once the tool has been activated, a notification will be received each time a friend checks in as being safe.

Facebook isn’t the only technology company to reach out to its users in Paris in the wake of the terror attacks.

Uber used its app to advise users to ‘not move unless absolutely necessary.’ Meanwhile, AirBnB sent its customers in Paris an email advising them to stay in place.

And Paris-based Twitter users have created a hashtag — #PorteOuverte, which translates to ‘open door — to open up their homes to those affected by the attacks. People around the world are also speaking out about the attacks on social media, using the hashtag #Prayers4Paris and #PrayForParis.

Paul Sawers of Venture Beat wrote about the criticism Facebook received for implementing its Safety Check feature for Paris and not for the bombings that rocked Beirut, Lebanon the same day:

“Many people have rightfully asked why we turned on Safety Check for Paris but not for bombings in Beirut and other places,” said Zuckerberg. “Until yesterday, our policy was only to activate Safety Check for natural disasters. We just changed this and now plan to activate Safety Check for more human disasters going forward as well.

“You are right that there are many other important conflicts in the world,” he continued. “We care about all people equally, and we will work hard to help people suffering in as many of these situations as we can.”

Alex Schultz, vice president of growth at Facebook, also responded to the criticism, saying that they activated Safety Check specifically for the Paris attacks because of the level of activity it was witnessing on the social network. “In the middle of a complex, uncertain situation affecting many people, Facebook became a place where people were sharing information and looking to understand the condition of their loved ones,” he said. “We talked with our employees on the ground, who felt that there was still a need that we could fill. So we made the decision to try something we’ve never done before: activating Safety Check for something other than a natural disaster. There has to be a first time for trying something new, even in complex and sensitive times, and for us that was Paris.”

It is true that there has to be a first time for trying new things out, but it was the timing of the launch, so close to the Beirut tragedy, that had raised people’s suspicions that Facebook was showing preferential treatment to a specific region of the world, namely Western Europe. But moving forward, Facebook has committed to activating Safety Check for other “serious and tragic” incidents. “We want this tool to be available whenever and wherever it can help,” added Schultz.