They’re trying harder to friend you.
Facebook has launched a number of efforts to fight the spread of the coronavirus over the past few weeks — reaching out to help governments, emergency response organizations, small businesses and its own workers and users.
The goodwill could go a long way to helping smooth over the trail of missteps and scandals that have plagued the company since 2016, CNBC reported Saturday.
“We want to make sure we’re doing what we can to help support the public health response,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a media call on Wednesday, CNBC reported. “Some of the work that these folks are doing is absolute heroic, and I’m personally very grateful for what they’re doing.”
The efforts began Feb.14, when the company used its Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters to host the World Health Organization and leaders from companies like Google, Amazon and Salesforce to brainstorm on what the tech industry could do together to find solutions to the outbreak.
Since then, Facebook has banned ads for medical face masks, hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and COVID-19 test kits that could lead to scams or price gouging, CNBC noted. On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said the company would roll out a coronavirus information center feature on users’ news feeds.
It’s also closed all of its offices and sent nearly all of employees to work from home. The only workers on-site are at data centers, where they are helping to ensure the infrastructure stays online, CNBC reported. And it chipped in a $1,000 bonus to offset workers’ work-from-home setups.
Externally, the company announced a $100 million program to help small businesses, and will provide cash or ad credits to 30,000 businesses that are in need, the news outlet reported.
Facebook also said it would also make its Workplace enterprise communications software free for the next 12 months for any governments or emergency response organizations that want them, CNBC reported.
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