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?"

A Good Thing

[VaticDart]

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.

Wall Posts

[cnvandev]

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.

Re:A Good Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about your friends family.
Does her parents and siblings really want people posting loads of messages on her facebook page ?

It is ok if people post thoughtful messages, but this is not always the case. A lot of people can't help giving their senseless opinion and having 50 messages like that can only hurt the people left behind.

Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is now the only way I hear or know about some members of my extended family and old friends. Sure, if facebook didn't exist, I would (may?) have made contact in some other way, but for now, it's what works. As long as it is the de facto standard for keeping in touch, memorializing accounts can allow for the shared grief between people I might not otherwise be able to commiserate.

My Brother's MySpace Account.

[TheWizardTim]

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.

Watch the network decay!

[The Archon V2.0]

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.

Re:A Good Thing

[jcnnghm]

Having had a friend die at 21 from a heart defect, then seeing the family's reaction to all the Facebook wall posts and tagged images, I think you're mistaken. The family was grateful for the outpouring of support, and his profile essentially turned into a memorial maintained by the family. They were the ones that requested that everyone add whatever photos they had, and continue posting remembrance messages. Many of the arrangements and a memorial service were announced through Facebook as well.

No more reconnects with dead friends, aww

[jfenwick]

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.

Re:Smart move!

[buswolley]

A rarely visiting cousin came over and made a Mii avatar on my Wii box. Subsequently, he died a violent flaming death in a car accident. Irrationally perhaps, I feel like it is my solemn duty to keep 'him' alive on my Wii. Make backups of him. Transfer him to my friends' Wiis.

Re:How long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the common-sense implementation of this service would be to simply fire off an email to the page's owner stating that "so and so (on facebook) reported you as dead, please reply within a week if this is just a prank" and then wait a week before entombing the page.

If you do get a response you could put the submitter on a blacklist where they can't report anyone else or take measures against him.

But yeah, maybe their programmers don't have much common sense. It wouldn't be the first time

Re:Smart move!

[EchaniDrgn]

I wasn't able to keep either my Father or my Father-in-law on my console after they died.

Part of me really felt bad about deleting their Miis, but I didn't want to see them walking around every time I booted up my Wii.