People live their lives similarly but a whole wide world differently. Too many people stay healthy, wealthy with happiness while many others remain in the dark drowning their sorrow. Nothing lasts forever, and there will be sadness after happiness and a smile after tears.
With a lot of pressure to appear happy, people are trying to turn to the internet as a mean to get help, or at least to get a piece of mind. One of the most popular place to meet friends on the web is on social media network. And the largest there is, is Facebook.
As the most prominent social media network, the company has been investigating how people are posting on its platform, It also realized that many of its users are looking for the web, and to Facebook, as their resource to get help when they're having a bad time.
Acknowledging this, Facebook is rolling out a simple tool that allow users to anonymously flag a post of friends they fear are potentially suicidal.
The tool works like a regular report button. But there, users can choose whether to allow Facebook to reach out to that friend and offer helpline and supporting materials to help them out.
Previously, this feature was only available to some English-speaking users. But now, Facebook is rolling out globally. And to make the tool a handy one, the company said that it has a team that works 24/7 in monitoring flagged posts.
Facebook has a lot to give, and users have a lot to do. As a social network, the giant is indeed the most feature-packed platform where new features are added and tested frequently.
In 2014, Facebook came under fire when the public went fury knowing that it has manipulated users' timelines to see what emotion they'll use to react.
But what becomes more visible is that Facebook'a algorithm is becoming more sensitive to words, and it's liking a 'good news' post instead of the 'bad news' ones. For example, when friends are having their birthday, and comments that include the words "congratulations" are more visible if compared to those that include compassionate words such as "my condolences."
This is a good thing because most people normally would like to see the good things in life instead of the bad ones. But again, the bad ones will happen, and sooner or later, friends will experience it.
And as time passes by, the public also know that Facebook is dependent to its fully-pledged algorithm that sort news feed to show what it thinks is the best for a user. Facebook's researchers also found that posts with negative associations typically received long, empathetic comments - so it's not a surprise for this to surface more for feeds of friends who regularly communicate with the original poster.
With the tool, Facebook wants to keep up with the good news, and the bad news. It wants to ensure its users to be able to bear the conditions that may seem to be suicidal. And to make that happen, Facebook needs a lot of help from its users to flag those sad posts.
For the explanation of the feature, Facebook's >Safety Tools & Resources covers many aspects to help you when encountering a direct threat of suicide on Facebook