Facebook Expands Community Help Feature So Users Can Offer Coronavirus Support
As group communities come together to fight the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook has expanded its Community Help feature in an attempt to help neighbors connect so they can deliver groceries or donate to fundraisers.
In a blog post, the social media giant explained that it will be rolling out the feature in the US, the UK, France, Australia and Canada in the next few days and expanding it to other countries over the next few weeks. Users can get to the Community Help feature by going through the COVID-19 Information Center that Facebook is placing at the top of the news feed, or visiting it directly.
There, users will be able to request items and help – filtered into categories including baby supplies, business support, food, toiletries, and volunteer work – or offer it. An individual post shows how far the person is from you, and users can either respond in a private message or a public comment as well as liking or sharing the post, as with other content on Facebook. Facebook’s Community Help feature launched in 2017 so that people could mark themselves as safe and “offer things like shelter, food, and supplies in the event of a natural disaster.”
Facebook is not the only company to roll out a feature like this. Nextdoor, a social network for local neighborhoods, is being used to share updates about the coronavirus and for people to share supplies like toiletries and cleaning products, reports CNN. However, Facebook’s larger user base and the ability to request help means it could be a more potent tool.
People are doing what they can while self-isolating to fight the disease. Nvidia’s [email protected] program, which uses excess computing power to solve equations to research a cure for the disease, has been downloaded so many times that it is now 10x more powerful than Summit, the world’s fastest supercomputer.
And popular voice assistants Siri and Alexa now offer up-to-date information and advice about COVID-19.
