Slashdot Mirror
Illinois Prof Calls for a Federal Law To Safeguard Digital Afterlives
An anonymous reader writes "A new paper from Professor Jason Mazzone at the University of Illinois calls for federal laws to regulate what happens to digital accounts after the account holder's death. Mazzone argues that Facebook and other online services have policies for deceased users' accounts that do not adequately protect the individual property and privacy interests at stake. The full text of the paper (called "Facebook's Afterlife") is also available: "
And I mean, comprehensive deletion.
Outside of nefarious uses, the information of a dead person is of no pactical value to facebook or its advertising customers. Dead people don't buy anything.
As such, it is a cost center to retain the information of dead people. They should eliminate all such data, to keep a high relevancy with thir advertising customers, and avoid having stale and inaccurate data to sell.
Quite right. I do that too.
(Ignore social networking, and run a local fileserver on a nonstandard port)
Sadly, many ISPs, mine included, simply do not like the basic idea behind the internet, and are very displeased when they discoveer people with consmer accounts hosting servers, even puny ones with essentially no traffic, like mine. Many even actively attempt to frustrate such efforts.
Such is the world it seems.
I don't want my Facebook deleted in the event of my death! My friends would lose all of the photos I posted of them! And all the comments and links and everything I posted on their timelines. And what if they want to come back years later and reminisce about old times. There are lots of reasons living customers might want to look at the information. Wouldn't it be better to freeze the account?
"I don't want my Facebook deleted in the event of my death!"
And if your friends don't want their photo kept after your death? What if they want to forget you? What if they want to move on? What would you have, a friends list and a dead friends list, and watch the dead friends list get longer and longer, and the friends list get shorter and shorter?
Facebook: Bobby5765 had died, we've automatically moved him to the dead friends list.
1 year later,
Facebook: Bobby5765 died one year ago, why not come visit his page, he'd have liked that.
2 months later
Facebook: Was Bobby5765's using his real name?
3 months later
Facebook: Did Bobby5765 have any relatives? Why not connect with them by selecting them from his contacts list below.
4 months later
Facebook: Bobby5765's friends indicated you're his son, we're sorry for your loss, why not remember Bobby5765 by visiting old photographs of him.
Moving on is important. What you want done with YOUR digital data after your death should be an account choice you make, not another data mining opportunity for Facebook. Default should be 'delete after 6 months'. Then your friends can archive anything they want on their site or computer.
What I don't want to see, is Facebook milking dead relatives for marketing purposes.
It was Facebook that really got my Mom into this whole "Computer thing". Since she passed, we have used her account as a hub for pictures, gatherings, and contacts. I see the point of eventually deleting her account, but it was surprising how many images and data that was singularly relevant to my family that was on her account that isn't recorded elsewhere... I would never have known the depth of her digital involvement if I didn't review her account. It's been priceless for my family. My two cents.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}