Facebook's special World Blood Donor Day announcement revealed that over 100 million users have signed up for its Blood Donations feature.
The announcement came via a blog post, made by Facebook's Head of Health, Kang-Xing Jin. In the post, she even remarked that two months after the program's integration in June, 2019, donations from first time blood donors rose by 19%. To compound upon that, surveys conducted in India and Brazil revealed that 14% of the blood donating crowd was influenced to do so by the social network's Blood Donations feature. This is no small feat. Neither is the fact that the feature is now actively operating in 37 countries, with Australia, Singapore, Colombia, Israel, and Tunisia have been added to the mix on the 14th of June, 2021.
The Blood Donations feature works as such: Facebook will send notifications to its userbase if any blood banks in their vicinity require donations. Users that will see such notifications will be of the ages 18-65, i.e. eligible to donate in the first place. The notifications will also provide the relevant blood bank/hospital's contact information in order to help facilitate users making informed donations. Other than that, the Facebook community can use Blood Donations in order to set reminders for blood drives, invite friends and family to donate, and even sign up themselves for future notifications.
This feature is honestly one of the more cheerful sides of Facebook's quote unquote "health community". Typically, the social network is regarded as an unfortunate stomping ground for movements such as anti vaccination or COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. Much of 2020 simply had moderators regularly updating their guidelines and content restrictions in order to control and dispel such individuals. However, due to Facebook's nature as a widespread online community, there's too many people, too many bots, and too many nooks and crannies to disappear into. It's frankly near impossible to fully moderate.
With that ugly picture in mind, the Blood Donations' 100 million users almost feels like a blessing. It signifies that there are people willing to do more than berate and generate fear. It's a glowing sign of positivity in an online space that can often be dampened by negatives. Disease and affliction often strike individuals, and blood's an all-too important resource. Individuals such as these ensure that the literal liquid of life keeps running, hospitals keep operating, and patients' lives keep getting saved.
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The announcement came via a blog post, made by Facebook's Head of Health, Kang-Xing Jin. In the post, she even remarked that two months after the program's integration in June, 2019, donations from first time blood donors rose by 19%. To compound upon that, surveys conducted in India and Brazil revealed that 14% of the blood donating crowd was influenced to do so by the social network's Blood Donations feature. This is no small feat. Neither is the fact that the feature is now actively operating in 37 countries, with Australia, Singapore, Colombia, Israel, and Tunisia have been added to the mix on the 14th of June, 2021.
The Blood Donations feature works as such: Facebook will send notifications to its userbase if any blood banks in their vicinity require donations. Users that will see such notifications will be of the ages 18-65, i.e. eligible to donate in the first place. The notifications will also provide the relevant blood bank/hospital's contact information in order to help facilitate users making informed donations. Other than that, the Facebook community can use Blood Donations in order to set reminders for blood drives, invite friends and family to donate, and even sign up themselves for future notifications.
This feature is honestly one of the more cheerful sides of Facebook's quote unquote "health community". Typically, the social network is regarded as an unfortunate stomping ground for movements such as anti vaccination or COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. Much of 2020 simply had moderators regularly updating their guidelines and content restrictions in order to control and dispel such individuals. However, due to Facebook's nature as a widespread online community, there's too many people, too many bots, and too many nooks and crannies to disappear into. It's frankly near impossible to fully moderate.
With that ugly picture in mind, the Blood Donations' 100 million users almost feels like a blessing. It signifies that there are people willing to do more than berate and generate fear. It's a glowing sign of positivity in an online space that can often be dampened by negatives. Disease and affliction often strike individuals, and blood's an all-too important resource. Individuals such as these ensure that the literal liquid of life keeps running, hospitals keep operating, and patients' lives keep getting saved.
Read next: Recreation of text styles present in any image can be possible, thanks to Facebook's new AI project
