Slashdot Mirror
Facebook To Preserve Accounts of the Dead
Barence writes "Social-networking site Facebook is planning to preserve the accounts of dead members. The new 'memorialized' accounts will continue to display photos and wall posts, but remove 'sensitive information' such as status updates and contact information. Friends or family who want to report the death of a Facebook member are encouraged to fill out the site's Deceased form. The form asks for proof of death, such as an obituary or news article, although it's not clear how Facebook can validate the death of a member if neither of those pieces of information is published on the internet. How long before someone snuffs it on Facebook before their time?"
They're making a wise decision: status updates and contact information for dead people pretty much define "sensitive information."
DEADGUY: "Status: Bones yellowed, but still have some structure. Rat finally got away with St. Anthony medallion. Anyone gonna to go the open bar at Styx tonight?!"
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
"Status: Dead"
"Status: Still Dead"
"Status: REAL Dead"
"Status: Excitedly Dead"
"Status: Dead Dead"
I give it......Thursday (tops) before someone is memorialized as a prank.
Be sure and leave a comment on Stephen King's page. Truly an American icon.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
This is good. A friend of mine committed suicide a little over a year ago and her Facebook page is the primary place that people talk about her, both right after the event and at various marker points. It's nice to check in on her page and see if anyone has posted anything new when I'm thinking about her.
I like the "memorialized" version of the page. How bad do you think it would be for someone to look through pictures of the recently deceased, go back to the profile and see all kinds of "Hey man, haven't seen you in a while...where've you been?" posts... I just hope there's no "Like" option for the change.
They should do that and also stamp DECEASED in red block letters diagonally across the picture, like you see on someone's file in the movies.
Sick of people knocking on Gentoo's greatness in completely unrelated
People won't bother to claim they died if it means it locks them out of their account as well.
After all, a real dead person can't update his/her status.
Myspace, in their desperate bid to stay relevant against Facebook, will introduce the "pour a 40" option, which is exactly the same; but much tackier.
http://www.abevigoda.com/ffb.php
Facebook account says he's still alive.
Nullius in verba
Heck, maybe the deceased person themselves wanted his or her account removed in case of death.
Guess they should have thought of that before they created their Facebook account. :-/
When I found out that my brother had cancer, one of the first things that I did was talk to my dad about getting account info for his email and MySpace page. Matt never moved over to Facebook. When he died, we were able to send a message to his friends, and let people know what happened. A friend of his set up a FaceBook group to remember him. It has been a huge help to read stories and good thoughts from the people who knew him. I am glad that FaceBook is doing this.
Rest in Peace Matt.
Dead for tax purposes.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Here's a thought - dead people's friends will eventually die. It follows that entire social circles will eventually die. This almost makes me hope that Facebook will thrive for the next however many years so someone can make one of those social-circle friend-of-friend graphs you sometimes see, except animated to show changes over time with dead links - no pun intended - graying out. Would probably be quite interesting and maybe pretty - growing at the edges, new nodes blossoming into existence, old connections fading, old nodes darkening. Like a more random version of Conway's Game of Life.
>> Social-networking site Facebook is planning to preserve the accounts of dead members. The new 'memorialized' accounts will continue to display photos and wall posts, but remove 'sensitive information' such as status updates and contact information.
So... basically what you are saying is Facebook's new data retention policy is "we retain your data forever, no excuses."
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Facebook is always telling me "Reconnect with X", where X is my friend who committed suicide. It kind of bothered me the first time it happened, although now I just see it as darkly humorous.
ob: Monty Python
I'm not dead yet!
Yes he is.
No I'm not.
Is there something you can do?
[thwack]
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Facebook to preserve accounts of the dead
Does it feel inappropriate that they announce this right before Halloween?
/* No Comment */
That thing jumping over you is a web2 remnant....
I'm certain twitter will have an auto twat service for the dead. "This twit is no more" "He has ceased to be". .....
...and add dust and scratches and ragtime piano to the videos.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Yes, but it will be changed to indicate that you are poking them with a stick.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.