Slashdot Mirror
Can Twitter and Facebook Deal With Their Dead?
Barence writes "One and a half million Facebook users die each year. Twitter faces a similar mortality rate. Yet the social networks have been relatively slow to deal with the uncomfortable business of death. Only this week has Twitter finally unveiled a policy for handling the accounts of dead members. Yet the process for closing the accounts of deceased relatives is complicated, while reminders to follow the accounts of people who have long since passed away continue to arrive, adding to the pain of grieving friends and relatives."
You know what, before I die I will create a program that posts random predefined messages to my Facebook account after I have died. One of the morning messages could be "having a morning coffee with satan" and late night message could be "man do I appreciate cold beer right now".
You only die once. The least you can do is have some fun creeping out people about it.
But in order to achieve this, the grieving relatives must send Twitter their full name and contact details, an explanation of their relationship to the deceased, the user name of the Twitter account and links to a public obituary that provides proof of death.
That's ridiculous; Netcraft confirmation should suffice.
.
Trolling is a art,
Automated systems are insensitive. News at 11.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It's not just a problem with social networks, of course; the question of what to do with a site when the owner dies is a question that has to be dealt with by all websites.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
... when it reaches 300 unanswered pokes.
Maybe it would be nice for social networking services to have a "key escrow" feature, or some way where trusted people who know the person can validate the account as dead automatically and have it disabled, similar to having key revokers in PGP that can yank a public key if the private key gets lost.
This feature would be up to the discretion of the individual, because this could be quite easily abused.
Who in their right mind pokes a dead person?
A very good friend of mine was murdered in October of 2008 (for those of you in Toronto/Ontario/Canada, Bailey Zaveda, the girl that was gunned down while outside of a bar having a cigarette) by someone she didn't know and had no involvement with.
Anyway, her facebook account still exists, and I don't see the problem with that. Everyone knows what happened to her, and her profile served as part of the grieving process for many people. To this day, they post their latest happenings in their lives on her wall, say happy birthday to her, etc.
I mean, if the interest here is to get the facebook.com/username or twitter userid back, then revoke those after say, 1 year of inactivity, but I don't see the harm in leaving the account there for people to reminisce, grieve, or whatever.
The problem would be greatly simplified if people kept a private record of all the services they use (or at least, the major ones), with login and password details. Have the list secured away somewhere, to be given to next of kin at time of death. That way they can be managed properly by whoever has to deal with the estate.
As people give more and more importance to their online presence, they need to think about how to take care of that presence in the same way they do the deed of their house, their car, etc.
When someone dies, their junk mail stops. It's pretty creepy when you notice this.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"One and a half million Facebook users die each year."
That's about 3 times as many annual deaths as tobacco users!
Where's the Bureau of Alcohol, Twitter, and Facebook when you need them?
There ought to be an automatic expiry based on the activity of the account.
E.g. after 2 months inactivity the account is put on hold (no reminders/messages sent to linked friends), then after say 18 months further inactivity the account is removed.
There would still be a period of shit the relatives and friends would have to go to through with getting messages etc but at least the issue could naturally resolve itself?
Why is it so difficult to just wait X days, and then close the account? You know, like other sites-which-don't-want-to-make-money-off-your-personal-information do ?
http://twitter.com/dj_am
...the first post-death tweet. Who ya gonna call?
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
I was at the Federated Social Web Summit this July, and over drinks, I was discussing this issue with other open source social networking developers. I mentioned that I've had a few friends pass who still have a presence on the social web (livejournal, facebook, myspace), and I really appreciate being able to go back and remember them that way. I also mentioned that their parents have access to their accounts, so people would get especially unnerved when that "online now" icon would show up or when they would pop up in a chat list, because their parents were checking or closing out their account.
I had a little too much to think, so I posited the idea of a system which learns, based on what you've posted, how to post like you after you're gone. Not a full representation, but a way to continue to create an impression of you. Less like Sonny from I, Robot, and more like Mal from Inception. A shadow of a person, based on what people remember. Or, more specifically, what the system remembers. Since conceivably, generations born in 2000 and up will live their whole lives on the social web, systems will have a lot of information with which to recreate a person's personality. When I suggested this, someone asked, "Why would I have to wait until I died to use this?"
I won't be coding this into Appleseed, because for now, it violates the "Don't Be Creepy" rule that sometimes people break when building prediction software. But there's no reason it can't be done, which means at some point, someone will do it.
Michael Chisari
Appleseed - http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/
Yeah... Looking forward to the new groups. "Need 250 more people to poke my recently deceased grandma!"
I didn't realise using Facebook and Twitter was such a risky endeavour.
Have a page with a fax number where next of kin can send off a death certificate as well as a fill in a page form specifying the exact account. Higher some minimum wage monkey to log the accounts. Bonus points if you can automate the process.
The worst part about dead people on Facebook is that if you haven't commented on someone's posts for a while and vice versa, Facebook will periodically urge you to 'reconnect' with them.
"Hey, you and DeadSpouse haven't been talking lately. You should post something on their wall."
It almost looks like they just took the number of active FB accounts, supposedly a bit over 500 million...and divided by 365? I don't think there's such level of recycling of population, nvm how FB users aren't in the age groups with mortality even close to average of the population.
And if one day they will become representative - that, sort of, will at the same time resolve the issue. People "dissapear" all the time and societies manage to cope - if only because of how death is typically a process, poeple often tend to vanish from social life some time before actually dying. It will be similar with FB probably / their accounts will be typically long abandoned.
One that hath name thou can not otter
How about if enough people write "Good night sweet prince" on your wall?
So what is Slashdot's policy about death?
OK, time to take a nap. Still, the point of it not being such a big deal stands...didn't people always want to be remembered anyway?
One that hath name thou can not otter
while reminders to follow the accounts of people who have long since passed away continue to arrive
A follow reminder from a dead Twitter user would be just plain creepy.
Join the window installer's union, where prosperity is a brick throw away!
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Dead members can't cancel their accounts. They are very convenient for padding your membership numbers, which makes you look better to the market analysts/investors. The motivation for them to do the honest thing and remove the accounts is that now, finally, someone pointed it out publicly so the charade is blown and the dishonestly is bad PR.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
You bastards leave my data ghosts in peace.
My daughter died 2 months ago in a car accident. Many of her family and friends still post messages to her Facebook page telling her how much we miss her. I'm not sure if it's helping or hindering the grieving process, but at least for me, it's been nice to hear from all the people who loved her. Some share memories while others just say they were thinking about her. There have been links to YouTube videos of sad songs, sappy (but sweet) poetry, and slideshows of her. At least for now, I can't even bring myself to delete her from my contacts in my phone, let alone delete her Facebook profile.
I crave immortality.
Have gnu, will travel.
Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.... also my facebook password is tellaphilltogoforward.
I have nothing compelling to say
I sense a new Dead exploit! :)
If people would just stop dying, we wouldn't have this problem.
Oh wait, Twitter users? Carry on.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You know, the ancient Egyptians believed that basically the Ka (soul) can move back and forth between the underworld and real world, as long as a suitable support for the Ka is provided and if possible a spirit door. (Read the shape of a door carved on the wall.) You could literally write a letter to grandma and leave it in her tomb, for her to read when she drops by. In fact, it even makes more sense than just talking and expecting grandma to hear from wherever she may be.
Me, I plan to take it to the logical conclusion and be buried with a laptop and internet access. Screw scripts, I'll read my own emails and post my own updates ;)
Unfortunately so far people tend to look funny when I ask about a crypt with electricity and ADSL ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"while reminders to follow the accounts of people who have long since passed away continue to arrive, adding to the pain of grieving friends and relatives"
I had a coworker who died roughly a year ago - and older guy who took me under his wing and taught me quite a bit. After he passed away his wife took over his account and posted pictures of him and both of them together when they were young. I thought it was an amazing celebration of his life and was a neat way for her to interact with people whose lives he had touched as well. For someone to say an account adds to the pain - I'd say that's highly subjective. People all handle death differently - let the individuals decide what's painful and what's not.
http://xkcd.com/686/
I wonder if Facebook/Twitter admins get the urge to follow the Alt-text...
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Just send the wheelbarrow around to clean up the web corpses.
But I'm not dead yet!
The real question here is what's the broadband situation like inside the Pearly Gates?
An obituary does not provide proof of death. A death certificate provides proof of death. If they have to have some sort of a link it should be to the relevant entry in the records of the jurisdiction where the death occurred (Yes, your death is a matter of public record. More of your precious privacy gone.)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
One way they could address about half of the issue would be to allow users to assign a secondary administrator (basically a "power of attorney") that had has the right to delete (not modify) the account after the account goes inactive for so many days. It's morbid, but so are living wills and we deal with those on a daily basis.
Of course, this would do nothing for the younger crowd who tend to die unexpectedly and aren't thinking ahead like this, but it would definitely put a dent in issue with ghost accounts and avoid a lot of the red tape that goes into handling these situations.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I'm not dead.
Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Web Crawler: Bring out yer dead.
[a Robots.txt responds to the request with a packet]
Robots.txt: Here's one.
Web Crawler: That'll be nine bytes.
Dead Person's Webpage: I'm not dead.
Web Crawler: What?
Robots.txt: Nothing. There's your nine bytes.
Dead Person's Webpage: I'm not dead.
Web Crawler: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Robots.txt: Yes he is.
Dead Person's Webpage: I'm not.
Web Crawler: He isn't.
Robots.txt: Well, he will be soon, he's got bitrot.
Dead Person's Webpage: I'm getting better. Look, new content from friends and family.
Robots.txt: No you're not, you'll be stale content in a moment. No more page requests.
Web Crawler: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations. Robots.txt, you should take him off your Disallow list.
Dead Person's Webpage: I don't want to go to the 404.
Robots.txt: Oh, don't be such a baby.
Web Crawler: I can't take him.
Dead Person's Webpage: I feel fine.
Robots.txt: Oh, do me a favor.
Web Crawler: I can't.
Robots.txt: Well, can you 302 temporarily redirect him for a couple of days? He won't be long.
Web Crawler: I promised I'd be at the Facebooks'. They've lost nine today.
Robots.txt: Well, when's your next round?
Web Crawler: 20100821 04:32:55 UTC.
Dead Person's Webpage: I think I'll go for a retweet.
Robots.txt: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
Dead Person's Webpage: Status Update: I feel happy. Status Update: I feel happy.
[Web Crawler spiders up and down the fibre optic pipe furtively, then silences the Webpage with a whack of his delisting]
Robots.txt: Ah, thank you very much.
Web Crawler: Not at all. See you on 20100821 04:32:55 UTC.
Robots.txt: Right.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But I get social networking website email invites all the time. I never read them (partially because they are a popular virus vector now) and rarely even catch the name in the subject line. I really can't imagine being offended by an invite from a dead person; it's just an automated email from an automated system.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
A million teenagers are rubbing their hands with glee and filling their friend's (or enemy's) mailboxes with "Are you dead yet?" messages as we speak.
What we really need is for Facebook to automatically hide accounts if you don't access them for 90 days. After six months without access they should be permanently deleted.
No sig today...
I think one thing the article didn't mention in social networking sites' options is to simply have an account "deceased" status. Pretty straightforward - it would have a tombstone picture (or something more tasteful) prominently displayed on the profile, and it wouldn't bug other users to reconnect with them. People would still be able to post to the wall, etc, but they would also get a notification that the user has died the first time they tried to send a message, etc.
...someone should really delete the account, or at least make it known that the owner is deceased. Perhaps sites like DubLi have some kind of corporate policy for dealing with situations like this that facebook, twitter et al could learn from?
If you're going to poke a dead person, their right mind is actually fine place to start. Trepanate and penetrate.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
As a funeral director I can make a few observations.
Deleting the accounts is a bad idea. Many of these accounts serve as online memorials to people's loved ones. Even if the person is no longer around to post or update their profiles, loved ones may take comfort in the fact that the deceased is still in their social network. Many of the people using social networks are still young people and most of their deaths are unexpected (accidents, suicides, homicides) and many of the survivors are still dealing with the reality of the situation. I think many of these companies need to be sensitive to the needs of the grieving and in an age where user loyalty is everything they should hold onto these accounts in the interests of of being sensitive to the grieving who make up part of their still alive user base.
If you ever want access to the content of somebody who died then you need to have the executor of the estate forward a page from the will outlining who the executor of the will is and a copy of the funeral director's proof of death. If you try and wait for official copies of the government's proof of death you could be looking at a 2 year wait. Also forward the name of the funeral home who handled the arrangements in case they have any questions. If you are not the executor or the person who made the arrangements then you need to get in touch with them and get their permission. It doesn't matter if you were the deceased's favorite brother the law in most places favors the executor.
Now all this being said, I need to caution loved ones that in the case of an unexpected death (like a suicide), trying to obtain access to people's social network data may be part of looking for answers as to why it happened. As somebody who has read a fair share of suicide notes and heard a lot of stories about circumstances surrounding sudden deaths I can tell you that sometimes are better off not knowing. You may learn secrets about your loved one you really did not want to know and it may cause damage to your opinion of them. A lot of private communications contains information we would not want to share with our loved ones and sometimes its best if loved ones don't know it (even after a death). So before you go charging into trying to go through all this information ask yourself if you are really prepared for what you might find. Did you really want to know that your loving married father was being unfaithful or your baby sister you adored had a serious debt and meth problem?
I had a close friend die and we had no problem getting Facebook to turn his page into a "memorial" page.
Is that more sensitive to you?
Prone to error if you are Prince, Prince Charles, Freddie Prinze Jr. or any member of royalty in a line of ascension.
I am single father of a 3 year old, her mother having passed away when she was just a few months old. Back then MySpace was still big and after her death I wanted to preserve her profile (especially blog and bulletin posts referencing our daughter). I could've taken screen shot after screen shot but that seemed quite the tedious process and there were a few posts that were private. I was able to guess her password after a few tries and start to archive this information but it took all of 5 minutes for me to receive several messages stating "Oh, my God. How are you on?" followed by a few people sending her account all of these intimate things they wished they had told her. I tried to stop reading as soon as I realized what was going on but this experience was still absolutely heart-wrenching for me, as this was only a few days after her passing. It took me several days to even bring myself to respond to those messages and crush their hopes that there was somehow an internet link to their perceived concept of an afterlife. So, if you happen to log into someone's account in order to preserve it after their death, make certain that you click "appear as offline" as soon as you log in :-/.
One and a half million Facebook users die each year.
Am I the only one who is celebrating?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
The only reason that anyone needs to delete or suspend an account is if it is automatically charging them every month for access. Since currently, Facebook and Twitter do not, there really isn't any reason to 'deal' with the account. There are many good reasons just to leave it as it is, as many posters before me have stated.
The things that irk me are the ways that cell phone providers and such try to keep contracts active, and charged for, way beyond the grave. Those are the ones that specific policies should be posted, and enforced by consumer laws.
All together now...
Monty Python-Bring out your dead!
(Yes, your death is a matter of public record. More of your precious privacy gone.)
If I see them publicly notice my death, I am going to be so pissed!
I have three Facebook friends who have died. The accounts of two of them were used to spread the word to family and friends -- both shortly before and after the fact in one case (where it was anticipated by the family but the person himself wanted it kept quiet until the last day or so) and afterwards in the other (it was sudden and completely unexpected, but he had a lot of friends all over the world). Both of these people in fact had friends added after death. The third one has simply gone dark; the family simply wanted everything kept private.
So it has actually proven to be of comfort to the families involved.
a story about Facebook is posted. Does that count?
To risk yet another Bradbury reference today, I highly recommend reading Ray Bradbury's short story, "Night Call, Collect," before implementing a post-mortem bot... Your older self may not think it's as funny as the person you are today.
Given the population of slashdot these days, it was bound to happen to someone. I wish I'd used up this bit of fate on a more fortunate coincidence.
A member of my extended family passed away earlier this week. It was not expected nor anticipated.
Yesterday I was asked for advice on removing this person's Facebook account. Given circumstances I won't divulge, the deceased's parents want to take it down. It is a source of grief and pain.
The unfortunate answer is that it will be a hassle, and one more unpleasant chore among many piled onto people who are already suffering.
With that said, I don't have a good answer for how Facebook or other such sites should handle this sort of thing. Making it too easy risks abuse.
WALSTIB!
This guy seems to be able to deal with the dead rather efficiently Perhaps they should contract him.
Does anyone remember this site? mydeadspace.com? At least I'm pretty sure that's the name of it. It's a site where you could "move" your MySpace profile on your death (or rather others could move it there for you, obviously you can't do it, you're dead). But back when MySpace was more of the rage, I always intended to setup a LW&T and include my username/passwords to everything and a request to move my profile over there.
Part of me wants to say that after I'm dead the people who matter will be close enough to know it with any kind of online notification... but then I think... I have a lot of friends in various parts of the country, even those I've never met that I still consider friend... how will they know? How many of you have friends or acquaintences you haven't seen on IM/FB lately? And that lack of online appearance stretches into months... then years... and one day you're randomly thinking about them and go, "Oh yeah, hey, I wonder what happened to GoodbyeCruelWorld74853?" It would be nice to know somehow. Maybe they died, or maybe they just created a new IM name and forgot to tell you, "SurvivingSuicideBringsNewPerspective893"
Never know.
ad astra per alia porci
... to follow the accounts of people who have long since passed away continue to arrive
You mean like the people from the American Cancer Society who continue to call my parents phone number askig for my father so they can hit him up for a donation even though he died of cancer over 12 years ago?
The Spacebook databases are not the only ones that need to learn how to deal with people dying.
leave a lot to be desired.
On a message board I frequent, there's a prank going around where a "friend" of a Facebook user will report the death of the user to Facebook, along with a faked obituary (apparently there are websites where one can easily create same), and based solely on this Facebook will lock down the account into "memorial" status.
It's currently easier for a stranger to convince Facebook that you're dead than it is for you to convince them that you're still alive.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Confidential to mods: Just because something is lower on the page doesn't mean it was posted after other, similar posts. The earliest timestamped post to raise a point can't be redundant.
Why is this only an issue with Facebook and Twitter? As much as people think Facebook is an extension of their lives, it's really just a website... No one ever worried about their Sierra Online or Compuserve account's status after they died, so what makes these two special? In my opinion, FB and Twitter should just deactivate account (since you know they never actually DELETE accounts) after 1 year of inactivity. Problem solved.
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I have all my accounts and their passwords recorded on paper. It's stored in my safe with a bunch of other paperwork that'll be needed after my death, and my executor knows where those are and how to get at them. I've also got my power-of-attorney papers and will written so as to give the executor of my estate authority over my on-line accounts for the purposes of cleaning them up and eventually closing them following my death.
Whether various services have or haven't decided how to handle user accounts upon the user's death, they'll find that their terms of service do not trump well-established law concerning power-of-attorney and estate management. And my executor has an attorney on tap who's familiar with all this and well-versed in handling estates. He anticipates minimal problems, and any that do crop up should be resolved quickly (California law mirrors the FRCP when it comes to attorney sanctions for frivolous legal positions).
my personal experience is different from your claim
or we have different ideas of long periods of inactivity on this scale.
I just bought something on ebay,
hadn't used it in 2.5 years
(thought three, checked my feedback, it was 2.5)
paypal let me in just fine....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This brings up a good issue. How many people out there have included a list of accounts and passwords with their will and designated what should be done with them? Who gets that information? Who gets the control? Do you want things like your Facebook page cancelled or do you want them to stand as a memorial? Can anyone even get to it to write what happened to you and inform those that would want to know but have no regular contact with your family? Do you want people to read your email after death? All sorts of information and issues are brought up in the digital age when a person dies.
Dead people are, well, dead. This means that Zuckerberg can't monetize them any more. So why should he get code written to afford them a graceful exit from Facebook?
Aren't pokes spam? Or does someone actively do that?
With Facebook it's hard to tell.
Wait! Wait! Wait! There are privacy issues here! (And we all know FB has plenty of those!)
Shouldn't they at least ask my permission if I want the world notified of my death?
What happened to a simple purge of inactive accounts? If after a year you haven't posted to your Facebook, they should just purge your account. This would take care of people taking space on their system while not using it and it would take care of the deceased as well. This doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. Since they haven't done so already, I think it just shows that they want to keep all the data they can because that is their business.
Reminds me of the time that I was working the Helpdesk at a big company. A manager's son had died the night before in a motorcycle accident (son worked for dad, nepotism was standard practice). The manager demanded that we remove all references of his name in the company, he just didn't want to hear his name again. Accounts, e-mail lists, etc. We had a semi-automated process to remove all of the users accounts which we started after he asked. Later in the day our high school intern comes in. He sits down and goes to work. One of his tasks was to finish up with the account removal process by sending an email to the person's manager asking if they want to keep their email mailbox open for the next 30 days or to close it. The standard email went something like this:
User X has been terminated, would you like us to close his email account now or keep his mailbox open for the next 30 days?
Needless to say, the dad came running into the IT office, mad as hell with tears streaming down his face. Intern had no idea the kid had died and the dad was furious about the usage of the word "terminated". We changed the standard email form after that.
Next time I come around I would want to reclaim my old FB account and pick up where I left off... discover the wonders of compound interest etc.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
This statistic is from Nuland's book "How we Die". About a quarter of use die in 24 hours or less from trauma or sudden illness. You really dont have time to do anything about it.
many computer companies are started by relatively young people who dont think about death often. Its probably rarely considered in an software architecture.
Your executor is not only responsible for distributing your worldly possessions. They also are responsible for filing your last taxes and closing all accounts and business transactions. The executor could also close your internet accounts as well. Simply leave instructions that your web accounts are to be closed or deleted upon your death along with the questions and answers you use to verify your identity and change your passwords. (or if you never change your passwords, the passwords themselves)
Just a thought
Slashdot has the same problem. I was without internet access for quite some time last year, and when I posted a new journal (fittingly titled Sickness, pain, and death. And Star Trek, these comments appeared:
Free Martian Whores!
...does this mean that using facebook is bad for your health?
.
When you's is dead, you's is dead.
.
When you's is gone, you's is gone.
.
When you's is dead and gone, there ain't no way you coming back.
.
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
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