Is Facebook a community resource for the common good? Yes—but it is also a for-profit corporation. Can it effectively be both at the same time? Focusing on Facebook’s Safety Check feature, London-based writer Tausif Noor examines the ways in which the company’s financial mission interacts with its community service mission in this March 2017 post to the blog RealLife.
Read it here: Noor, “Safety in numbers”
- Noor lauds Facebook’s Safety Check function, but at the same time, he is critical of it in several ways. What does Noor mean when he advises that “praise for its social initiatives should be tempered with at least some degree of skepticism”? What does he think users should be skeptical about? Why? Explain Noor’s argument.
- Noor begins with a reference to the “Bowling Green Massacre,” a disaster that, in fact, never happened, and throughout the course of the essay, he refers to several other natural and non-natural disasters. What prior knowledge does Noor assume his audience has? Presuming that he wrote this piece for a general audience of interested adults, does Noor provide sufficient background information about the disasters and other events he mentions? Why or why not? Point to specific examples to support your conclusions.
- There is very little explicit They Say in Noor’s essay, but he employs some of the same moves for informally introducing objections, which you can find in Chapter 6 of your text. Identify two of those moves. Are the moves effective in anticipating rebuttal to Noor’s main argument that Facebook’s efforts “are ultimately indifferent to anything but individual behavior”?
- Noor specifically addresses Facebook’s Safety Check function, but his argument is positioned within a broader discussion about the use of Facebook as a primary information source for world events. Do you think your use of Facebook makes you more aware of world events than you would be without it? Less aware? Why do you think so? Does Facebook broaden your perspective on the world? Do you remain focused on world events as “mainly of personal interest, or not,” as Noor describes? Write an essay in which you respond to these questions, using Noor as your They Say. (If you don’t use Facebook, interview two or three people who do, and use their responses to inform your own.)
They Say I Blog 
Thank you very much. Please convey my thanks to the the writer.
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He suggests to users that they should have slight skepticism because he even admits that Facebook is taking on new and heavy responsibilities. Not only does it solve some issues, it has also raised more complicated issues. The company also tends to make mistakes that attract criticism, such as deploying a safety check for a non-natural disaster. By doing so, it made it appear as if the company prioritized western disasters and ignored the middle east.
Noor gives that example first because he wants to open the topic with something the audience would understand. Opening this way would help the audience get a grasp of what the concept of a Facebook system is while introducing it in a light-hearted manner. He probably assumed that the audience would be knowledgeable on modern internet humor, such as memes, tweets, and photoshopped pictures. If Noor gave his speech to adults and not a younger crowd who is involved with social media, he would have been giving no background information and may confuse his audience. He does not give helpful background information because he would be saying a story that adults would most not likely understand the joke. Mentioning a fake massacre would be a pointless background.
Personally, I use the applications twitter and youtube more than Facebook. Although Facebook is quite useful for acquiring knowledge on current events, there are other platforms to discover world news. I feel that I would be just as knowledgeable about news as I am today if there was no Facebook. But if in a scenario where Facebook is the only platform I use, I would be clueless about the events that are happening in our world today. I feel that Facebook broadens my views on the world slightly. It provides me with videos or posts that can help give me different perspectives and opinions on certain topics.
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Tausif Noor makes it clear by expressing the convenience of accurately staying up to date with social events. However, it is of great importance to understand that it’s not always safe to assume that your personal information is always private. I believe that social media shouldn’t change a person from still getting out and asking on what’s going on as far as what events are taking place. Safety functions aren’t always accurate. Facebook has caused me to become more cautious of what I post online due to so many horror stories. Social media can be an amazing thing but just one push of a button can change your life.
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