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,
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
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.
"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?
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.
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
Unless you're getting spam from someone who's logging into the dead person's account to help their own Farmville game or whatnot, you shouldn't even be getting anything that would remind you it's still active.
NickJones08 is pushing up daisies in Farmville!
Play Farmville now and help him out!
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?