Facebook to Start Posting Amber Alerts on News Feeds

Facebook has teamed up with The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to bring Amber Alerts to its users in their news feed.

According to Facebook’s Security, Trust and Safety Manager Emily Vacher, Facebook is the world’s biggest neighborhood watch community.

Once the NCMEC and law enforcement put out an Amber Alert, the popular social media website will send a targeted Amber Alert to people through their News Feed on their computer or their phone as well as detailed data about the child.

Vacher said the information may have a picture of the child, the description of the vehicle, and any data the public needs to help find the missing child.

For example: two-year-old Myra Lewis of Camden Mississippi went missing on March 1, 2014. Her picture, the information of where she was seen last and what she was wearing at the time she was missing would go to Facebook users of the search area immediately.

People could share the alert with Facebook friends, extending the alert’s reach to their network and more.

Vacher said people who get these alerts via their phone are put in the position to help law enforcement find the child. Vacher said the social media website wants their users to look for the child – to do anything they can to bring that child home.

NCMEC Co-Founder John Walsh said the partnership has real promise to be beneficial. The majority of children are murdered by their taker, usually within the first four hours after going missing. He said this move between the agency and Facebook gives loved ones and parents hope that their child will be found and brought home.

Walsh’s six-year-old son Adam was kidnapped and found dead in 1981. He said the system’s immediacy could be the key between life and death.  Walsh said Facebook users get a picture of the reported missing child – something they don’t see on the radio or highway sign. This gives them the important information on their phone and computer, he said. Walsh said this could have made a big impact on his son’s abduction and murder.

Users of the social media website already use it to spread word about Amber Alerts, and because of that, kids have been found. The new system has been created to boost the efficiency and reach. Walsh believes this could be a real difference in rural regions.

He said there are many areas in the U.S. where law enforcement is thin, which makes the power of media so necessary. Walsh said the power of the social media platform allows people to know about the alerts right away.