Can Twitter and Facebook Deal With Their Dead? 284
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."
Snore (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just social networks (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Perhaps a "key escrow" feature? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Pre-death preparations (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Expiry? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Account Inactivity? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 ?
Re:Perhaps a "key escrow" feature? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So serious (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So serious (Score:3, Insightful)
These days, most deaths are not surprises. Maybe not in Facebook's demographics, but most deaths are not.
1.5 million each day? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Snore (Score:2, Insightful)
Good for padding membership numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't know about Twitter, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When facebook reminds me that it is a dead person's birthday, that can be kind of nice as a reminder of good times. When facebook tells me that I havent contacted a dead person in a long time and I should try to re-connect with them, it is slightly upsetting.
My daughter died recently (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:So serious (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that depends on your definition of surprise.
"I expected this, but not so soon" could be written on many tombstones.
Orly? (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Maybe I'm Just Insensitive... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My daughter died recently (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this is offtopic, but please accept my condolences for your loss. I cannot imagine anything worse than the loss of a child.
Re:So serious (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, you're wrong. About the only unsurprising deaths are cancers and aids. As many people die of heart attacks as cancer, and death from heart disease is usually swift and unexpected. In fact, in my nearly six decades of having people die on me, only three were not surprises, and all of them were cancers. The rest were auto accidents, one friend was murdered by someone trying to rob him, and the rest were heart attacks or old age.
If you'd said "100 years ago most deaths were not surprises" I'd have agreed; most people back then died of things like tuberculosis, influenza, etc.
Re:Perhaps a "key escrow" feature? (Score:4, Insightful)
Confirmation of the death isn't a problem, there are all sorts of efficient ways to do that. There are other reasons that people aren't being reported as deceased.
One of my very close friends died recently and the reason none of his Facebook friends have filed is because Facebook will delete all of his status updates. Maybe it is painful to see his name or face pop up every once in a while on my Facebook page, but it's much more painful to see all of our conversations on his wall get deleted because of Facebook policy.
Re:Bah, who needs a script (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, yeah - I mean, ADSL sucks; of COURSE they're going to look at you funny. You should at least look into fiber, which is at least somewhat futureproof.