Facebook kicked off its inaugural Social Good Forum in New York on Thursday by introducing a range of fundraising and community safety updates.
First up, the company announced it is handing over its Safety Check tool to its global user base, which is just as well considering Facebook’s selective activation of the feature has previously been met with criticism.
Launched in 2014, Safety Check allows users to alert their network that they are safe during an emergency. Starting today, an algorithm will trigger the tool when a particular incident starts trending on Facebook. People in the vicinity of the emergency will be asked if they’re safe, and prompted to invite their friends to do the same.
In addition to Safety Check, Facebook is also launching a new Community Help feature early next year. The tool essentially allows users affected by a crisis (such as a natural disaster) to connect with other people offering support through shelter, transport food, equipment and baby items. Once someone checks in as safe, they can either offer or search for help using the new feature.
Keeping things charitable, Facebook also announced it is expanding its Fundraisers tool (which lets people raise money for select nonprofits). The company claims users can now add a donate button to their Facebook Live broadcasts. It’s easy to see the new feature coming in handy for viral charity challenges (in the vein of the ALS Ice Bucket challenge that took the internet by storm in 2014), allowing people to live-stream their antics and watch the donations roll in. A total of 750,000 nonprofits are now included in the Fundraisers tool.
Additionally, Facebook is partnering with the Movember Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In honor of Giving Tuesday, the latter will provide $500,000 in matching funds, up to $1,000 per Facebook fundraiser. Facebook will also waive up to $500,000 of fees on all donations.
“Facebook has always been about building community and relationships,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a video. “We’re going to keep finding new ways to empower our community through technology and services in a way that’s effective.”
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?