Facebook Causes
An extension of Facebook's social good services with the aim to empower users to share original stories, publicly or anonymously.
Year
2017
Role
Case Study
Product Design
Work
Concepting
Strategy
Product Design
Team
Maheen Sohail
Overview
In times of pain, it’s our social movements, communities, and spaces of collective healing that help us find our voices.
Facebook Causes is a space for everyday users to learn about social causes and non-profit orgs (NPO) and share their own personal experiences. Stories of hope, heartbreak, and resilience are what bring communities together. In doing so, we’re able to help raise awareness of NPOs and the work of local, national, and global movements.
Opportunity & Insights
Aside from visiting a charity or nonprofit's Facebook Page, there aren’t many tools or points of entry for users to engage with social movements and topics that closely affect them.
‘Profile Picture Frames’ serves as a low barrier for users to express their support for various causes on the platform. However, the experience itself caters toward passive involvement and misses out on the opportunity to provide users, both those posting or viewing, with any kind of meaningful takeaway. Who is the organizer? What does the cause represent? Who does it affect? What kind of change are they looking to create? And how have those around me been personally affected by the cause? If we don't take the time to create spaces for learning, we fail to reach one another in our communities and fall deeper in inaction.
With Facebook Causes, we seek to unify Facebook's existing tools like Profile Picture Frames, Fundraisers, Pages, Groups, and Events to create a continuous dialogue on the causes and campaigns that move us forward.
Onboarding
Causes can be discovered through a variety of entry points: Pages, Events, Groups, Trending Posts, Friends, and the most promiment, Timeline. In the following video, we illustrate how a user named Mazen might go about discovering the Causes feature through their Timeline.
As a first-time user, Mazen can dive directly into a Causes either through an onboarding card on his Timeline or the Causes tab in his newsfeed. By clicking into a campaign page, such as the IRC’s 'We All Seek Refuge,' Mazen can read up on top stories for the cause, learn more about the facts and timeline of events, find fundraisers and local events, and join groups related to the movement.
Share Your Story
The stories we share have the ability to provide others with new perspectives and realities different from their own. It's what Facebook was largely founded on, with users sharing posts and stories that made us feel more connected.
In April 2016, a report published by the Information found that Facebook has been struggling to reverse a 21% decline in “original sharing,” from its 1.6 billion monthly active users.
In efforts to reverse this decline and cultivate spaces of empathy, Facebook Causes provides a platform for users to lend their voices and share the personal experiences that help drive our causes. By allowing users to identify the nature of their story — whether it be uplifting or traumatic — this lays the groundwork for Facebook to provide adequate tools and means of support. As Mazen identifies with sharing a 'traumatic' experience, Facebook provides him with the prompt to conceal his identity and remain anonymous in order to ensure that Mazen is equally safe and supported. Mazen can also choose to specify from what perspective they're writing the story from, in hopes of providing nonprofits with greater understanding of their audience.
Follow-Up
After sharing their story, Mazen can browse recommended and related stories, groups, pages, and events to continue the conversation.
In order to go one step further, Facebook Causes allows nonprofits the tools to provide appropriate resources and immediate support via Messenger. This can take form as a chatbot or through Facebook's Secret Conversations that offers full encryption and maintains Mazen's anonymity with the nonprofit. These tools can be triggered by specific themes or keywords found in an individual's story. For example, if Mazen's story shows signs of self-harm or distress, the chatbot can intervene to provide a first-line of support.
Moderating Stories
In order to provide a safe environment, we explored a range of methods that both nonprofits and Facebook can use to moderate inappropriate content and the authenticity of a story. Facebook currently has a set of community standards in place to ensure that all content being posted is community friendly, protecting users from hate speech, harassment, violent and graphic content, and more.
Nonprofits will have access to Publishing Tools that allow them to sort, approve, and filter specific posts. Tools like being able to filter based on the author's perspective allows nonprofits the ability to ensure they display a well-rounded campaign.
In the event that the nonprofit requires more details from a user's story or a story doesn't meet a community guidelines, the nonprofit can select ‘send for edits,’ notifying the writer.
Discovery Through Events & More
At the core of it, Facebook Causes provides the ability to unite and amplify our voices and experiences across the platform. The following video provides an example of a user, Connie, engaging with Causes after attending an an event. Connie then decides to share their story, not just towards the Cause, but to her friend's and network as well through Profile Picture Frames.
By creating a central area to discover campaigns held by nonprofits, Facebook Causes allows us to share, understand, and listen to the stories behind the cause, creating a more open, informed, and connected community.