Facebook’s Community Action feature aims to give interest groups and communities a voice to request changes from elected officials – on a local and national basis.
Renowned social media networking site Facebook has made it to the headlines for having announced the launch of its new feature, called ‘Community Actions’. As per sources familiar with the knowledge of the matter, with this feature, Facebook intends to unite neighbors in a bid to request change from their domestic and national elected officials and government agencies.
Apparently, the Community Action launch follows the introduction of other civic-minded FB features such as the local news digest ‘Today In’, the ‘Community Help’ in order to find assistance post a disaster, and the ‘Candidate Info’ and the ‘Town Hall’ for assessing politicians.
Credible reports cite that Community Action will commence functionality in the United States, in a couple of markets, starting tomorrow, post numerous weeks of testing. With the feature, users will now be able to add a description, image, and title to their Community Action, after which they can tag relevant government agencies and officials who will be notified.
Facebook essentially aims to make the Community Action feature go viral and have their users hit the ‘Support’ button. The roll-out boasts of its own discussion feed wherein people will be able to drop comments, organize Call Your Rep campaigns or Facebook Events, and even create fundraisers. Facebook will be displaying the supporters behind a Community Action, however, as a user, one would be able to see only those names that are in the person’s ‘Friends’ list or those that are Pages or public figures.
A report by the PhoneArena claims that the Community Action feature will be managed by a combination of proactive algorithmic detection, FB human moderators, and user flagging. Additionally, FB users will be able to share a Community Action to their own News Feed, thereby informing their followers about their approval or disapproval of the same.
Apparently it is also possible to launch a counter-Community Action in order to protest against a specific petition.