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BEACON TRANSCRIPT – On Sunday, disaster hit Florida after a gunned man killed more than 50 people at a gay bar. The Orlando Shooting sprouted Facebook to enable its Safety Check feature for the first time in the United States. The option was previously used after the natural disasters in Nepal and the Paris bombing.
The Safety Check feature was first introduced in 2014. The option was created with disaster in mind. Zuckerberg’s company wanted to offer to its users a way to tell people that they are safe in the case in which they were ever in the vicinity of a national or global catastrophe.
Unfortunately, ever since its October 2014 unveil, the feature was activated multiple times. Up until Sunday, all of the instances in which Zuckerberg considered it necessary to enable the option took place in Europe or the Middle East.
According to history, the Orlando shooting is the biggest shooting ever to occur on the territory of the United States. For the moment, the number of fatalities has reached 50, but lots of victims are still hospitalized.
The Orlando Shooting took place in a gay club by the name of Pulse. Every individual who was present there had no idea of the disaster that would claim the lives of so many people.
At approximately 2 AM, Omar Mateen, a 29 years old citizen of the United States, and Florida resident opened fire in the club. The man was armed with a handgun and a semiautomatic, managing to wreak havoc among the club goers.
After news of the incident started to spread, social media users started to show their support by posting encouraging messages for the LGBTQ community accompanied by the #PrayForOrlando hashtag.
Not long after the news started reporting from the scene of the incident, the social network activated its Safety Check feature in order for the regular customers or the victims that survived the tragedy to let their friends and family know that they were safe after the Orlando shooting.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of the social network declared on his official account that “waking up in the morning, I was horrified to hear about the shooting in Orlando. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and the LGBT community.”
Image source: YouTube
