Facebook to include Amber Alerts in News Feeds

Facebook and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children have teamed up to post Amber Alerts on Facebook News Feeds, beginning this week. While the alerts, which notify people if a child has gone missing in their area, are currently broadcast through cellphones, television and radio, this marks the first time a social media site will post them.

The alerts will include a photo of the child and a possible location of the abduction, NPR reports, and will only be sent to users local to the abduction. According to Facebook’s trust and safety manager Emily Vacher, Facebook has a history of being used as tool to bring home missing children.

“We’ve noticed over the last couple of years that when kids go missing, people started posting about this on their Facebook pages to share information within their own communities,” Vacher said to NPR. “And we saw a lot of successes out of this. Kids have actually been brought home because of the information people shared on Facebook.”