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Facebook Adds Legacy Contact Feature In Case You Die Before It Does
alphadogg writes "Facebook has added an option for users to delegate management of their account for when they die. The idea is to avoid awkward lingering Facebook pages after a person passes on, perhaps featuring images or posts that someone would rather not be remembered by....This isn't the first time Facebook has put thought into what happens to users' accounts when the users die. A year ago the social network outlined a more flexible approach to memorializing accounts. Now memorialized accounts will have the word "Remembering" hovering above a person's name.
....the Legacy Contact has to be an existing Facebook user? How much inbreeding can the human race withstand?
It would be better if the data slowly corrupted over a year eventually ending in a bunch of gibberish text and glitched photos...
Thinking about it, I guess that means it would just make it indistinguishable from most other accounts.
To simply delegate removal by someone upon death?
How do you monetize the page of a dead person?
...omphaloskepsis often...
old problem documented here
http://xkcd.com/686/
and obligitory...xkcd
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Facebook knows when your dead and ...
The more important question is:
Would Facebook know I am dead before I do?
With all their Big Data, you would think they could figure that out.
That would also allow individuals who wish to start over (say: when they grow up a little) to do so by simply starting a new account and leaving the old one to die off.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
almost nobody would, this only matters to fb. an ever increasing number of zombie accounts is no good for their business model, since advertisers know that dead people don't buy stuff. i guess by having a small proportion of them tagged they hope to hide the real figures.
There is no rule that a Facebook page must be owned by a living person. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg disagrees, because you can't data mine or sell ads to a dead person.
Yeah, but the advertisers don't know that you are dead. Do you think the line for screwing over should be drawn between those that pay and those that don't?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Now memorialized accounts will have the word "Remembering" hovering above a person's name.
What about my (presumed) right to be forgotten?
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
...when your social network starts to feel like a cemetery.
Didn't realize my to-do list should include "outlive fucking Facebook." Of course, I'm getting on in years, so maybe I should start actively trying to orchestrate the company's demise. In the event of my success, the slashdot headline should read "Remembering Facebook."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
His parents posted a bit on their own FB about his death, but nobody saw it except very close friends of the family. It would have been nice to see that info on his page rather than to be hidden on theirs. It's not just the close friends that care, especially when we're all so young (around 30). He touched many hearts, even if we weren't all his good friends, there was nobody that didn't like him.
One of his best friends and my old classmate started a donation page for flowers and a cash gift for the funeral. They discussed it and raised a respectable amount, through FB groups and messages. I understand that everyone hates on FB, and I usually do too, but to be fair, it makes communication very easy and convenient, and if there was a way to donate to his funeral or to buy flowers from his FB page, I know I a lot of people would have done it.
It's good for FB, and I'd argue that it's not bad for the deceased and their friends and family. The family can delete any embarrassing photos, update info about the death and funeral, and leave a touching eulogy for friends to see no matter how close they were. Sure, FB will try to monetize it, but that's the nature of a business. Profit off anything possible. At least they're not being completely disrespectful with the way they're doing it.
Not sure why we're discussing this. With this feature, Facebook will eventually become more dead than alive (animals are well on their way), and I'd have to question the intent of advertisers when Facebook becomes a "social" cemetery. I would hope they would too.
Oh look, another banner ad for 3D-printed tombstones. I'm gonna wait until Black Friday when they have that killer sale...
Because we'd prefer to forget.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You needn't die. You just need to tell FB you did.
Actually, I'd fully expect a lot of people to screw around with this toy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can't help it, but it already feels a bit like the virtual representation of a human landfill, wouldn't that even make it worse?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's essentially going on already. I took my 18 year old twins to a family cemetary and realized they'd never been to one before. On Facebook however, there is a "In Memorium" page for my High School, where people update each other as friends pass. Much more visited, I think, than the cemetary. I think its a done deal.
Gently reply
I'm hoping Facebook will be defunct by the time I kick.
Make America grate again!
Picking up on the "hovering" in the summary "Now memorialized accounts will have the word 'Remembering' hovering above a person's name", I was going to ask a sarcastic question along the lines of whether there would also be a "tasteful" angel's wings icon alongside the "hovering" text.
But looking at the linked facebook page" all I see on the example is "Remembering" placed above the person's name. No apparent "hovering".
The words actually used by Facebook are "We’ve also redesigned memorialized profiles to pay tribute to the deceased by adding “Remembering” above their name", so why does the summary use "hovering", which seems just wrong?
I hear that Facebook has a sensitivity team that responded to that guy who wrote a blog post when the "Year In Review" displayed a lot of pictures of his daughter that died from cancer during the year. (Apparently, Facebook was terribly insensitive in doing that or something...*)
So, it's not terribly surprising that Facebook would address something like this. Especially since the internet hasn't really had the chance to process what it means to have so much digital information on someone online yet. For instance: I received a friend suggestion on Facebook for someone who died last year. We weren't close, but I was sad she passed.
What does that mean if you don't have someone assigned as a legacy, then? Can you report the page as someone who's passed? Do you need to provide proof? What if that system gets abused and locks up people's pages because trolls think it's funny that you have to prove you're still alive in order to access your page?
*No, I'm not mocking the guy for having lost his daughter; guaranteed someone will interpret this statement that way. I personally think it's weird that said blog post became a "thing" on the internet as someone with a downgraded version of the same situation (put our dog to sleep in December; her pics came up a lot in my YIR...which, I know is hardly the same as losing a child to cancer, but if I were to scale it down, I wouldn't have called Facebook "vaguely insensitive" for that. Still miss my dog, though), as if somehow Facebook has the AI to discern exactly enough context from posts to make a perfect and not emotionally damaging YIR for everyone.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Now, when someone's password is compromised, not only will they get access to your account but be able to close someone else's or mark it as if they died.
But seriously, I get the point of them doing this and limiting what you can actually do to the account. It's not like they can post anything. I wonder what protections or back out strategies they have when the designated person's account is compromised and they close a family member's account who isn't deceased.
The idea is to avoid awkward lingering Facebook pages after a person passes on, perhaps featuring images or posts that someone would rather not be remembered by.
This is exactly why we need the Internet Facebook Archive to preserve these things: so we can remember who you really were.
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Is a zombie considered living or dead by facebook standards? I am just asking in case of a zombie apocalypse because the legacy contact has also chances to be a zombie too.
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
I wonder if the person they give rights to "delegate" their account must actually be a Facebook user themselves. If so, it seems they have stumbled unto a way to slightly prevent user decline (in a sicko sort of way).
while deployed in Afghanistan, we used to joke that the Army's most reliable form of communication was Facebook. we only half joked. it was the one way we knew we could contact other people in theater reliably.
If you have a friend (or a script) to randomly make posts and click on "Likes", just how will fb know you're dead?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Would you really trust someone else to do your eulogy? :)
Should you really trust someone else to do your eulogy?
What ever happened with If you want something done right, you have to write a script for it?
At least this way you'll get the last word.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The one thing they did not think about is that they didn't allow a bit of lead time for locking down accounts. I lost my loving partner a few months ago and have been logging in to her account daily to check for messages from old friends who may want to be added to her list so they can read about some of the things being done in her name. I know a lot of people think Facebook is silly and take it for granted, but when you're severely physically disabled, it is a valued communications tool. Her words were all she had. In all of our years together I cared for her, bathed her, fed her, cleaned her, laughed with her, cried with her, and laid at her hospital bedside for 5 days straight before she died and now have her ashes at my bed side table, but a policy that didn't exist before she died says that I can't be the designated caretaker of her page?