Facebook Safety Check creates false bomb scare in Bangkok

BANGKOK: Ever since the Facebook introduced the ‘Safety Check’, to let people during natural or man-made disasters to quickly determine whether people in the affected geographical area are safe, has become troublesome due to some glitches.

On Tuesday, the site activated its “Safety Check” feature across Thailand’s capital. That means that anyone it thinks is in the area will see a message informing them that there has been “an explosion”, and encouraging them to mark themselves safe from it.

But no such explosion actually happened and the fake alert seems to be the result of changes that the company has made to its Safety Check feature. It appears to have been activated by a minor incident, reported only in the local news, where a man took firecrackers to a government building in an apparent protest.

The message gives none of that context and instead just mentions the explosion and asks people whether they are safe.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced that it would be using people’s posts to help decide when the Safety Check would be activated – meaning that it didn’t necessarily need to be turned on by staff at the social network.