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18 November, 2015

Facebook Flips On 'Safety Check' In Nigeria After Bombings


Facebook has turned on its "safety check" feature in Nigeria after Tuesday's bombing in the country, which killed more than 30 people and wounded dozens. The feature will prompt users who live near the bombed site in the city of Yola to get them to respond if they're safe so friends can be informed.
On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded vegetable market in the northern Nigerian city of Yola, reports say. Yola has been hit twice by bomb attacks this year, and is one of the worst affected cities in the country by Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.
This is the fastest time that Facebook has activated the feature between incidents. It turned it on last Friday after the attacks on Paris occurred.
The company was recently accused of appearing to be selective in who gets the feature. Critics slammed the social network for turning on the feature in Paris, but not Beirut, which suffered a double suicide bombing in a crowded marketplace the day before Paris was attacked.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed these criticisms in a post on his Facebook page, saying that it had initially reserved the feature for natural disasters, but that the company would now activate safety check for "more human disasters going forward."
Safety check was first introduced in October 2014, and was used in April this year after the earthquake in Nepal.

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