MANILA, Philippines – Facebook has a new initiative that lets its employees understand and empathize with people suffering from slow Internet speeds.

Business Insider reported Tuesday, October 27, that the 2G Tuesdays initiative of Facebook will allow its employees to see the impact of their work with Facebook on slow connections.

Facebook employees who log into the app on a Tuesday have the option to try Facebook on a slower connection for an hour.

According to Facebook Engineering Director Tom Alison, “For that next hour, their experience on Facebook will be very much like the experience that millions of people around the world have on Facebook on a 2G connection.”

Alison explained further that employees were “going to see the places that we need to improve our product, but they’re also going to see the places where we have made a lot of progress.”

The 2G Tuesdays initiative will attempt to close an empathy gap between the highly developed tech world and the realm of emerging markets. The hope is that employees experiencing Facebook on the slower connection speed will offer suggestions and report issues that can help make Facebook a better service for more people. – Rappler.com