Facebook Offering New Profile Frame To Let Friends Know You Stopped Scrolling Briefly To Look At Disaster Photos And Felt Sorta Bad

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MENLO PARK, CA—In light of recent catastrophes both at home and abroad, Facebook began offering a new profile frame Friday that lets friends know you stopped scrolling for a second to look at disaster photos and felt sorta bad. “We’re offering users a highly visible way to let their Facebook friends know that they paused to look at a heartbreaking disaster relief photo while scanning their news feeds and experienced a twinge of sadness,” said spokesperson Susan Isbell, explaining that the tasteful overlay depicts a person in the lower portion of the frame looking pityingly into his smartphone. “It’s important that our users have a way to spread the word about how their hearts sank after a video from the Red Cross auto-played on their feeds for a few seconds before they continued past it to like a friend’s funny status update. The more people talking about how awful it feels when you very quickly glimpse a New York Times thumbnail of a tearful elderly couple standing in the ruins of their flood-ravaged home, the better.” Isbell added that the site would simultaneously be phasing out the profile frame that allows you to donate to relief organizations, which failed to gain substantial traction among Facebook users.