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Facebook Adds Legacy Contact Feature In Case You Die Before It Does 80

Posted by samzenpus from the after-you're-gone dept.
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.
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Facebook Adds Legacy Contact Feature In Case You Die Before It Does More

Facebook Adds Legacy Contact Feature In Case You Die Before It Does

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  • Let me guess.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by chrism238 ( 657741 ) on Friday February 13, 2015 @01:33AM (#49045033)
    ....the Legacy Contact has to be an existing Facebook user? How much inbreeding can the human race withstand?

    • And why would you be on Facebook if nobody else you know/trust is using it? Kind of defeating the whole point, there.

  • Incorruptable (Score:4, Interesting)

    by retech ( 1228598 ) on Friday February 13, 2015 @01:38AM (#49045043)
    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.

    • Re:Incorruptable (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Friday February 13, 2015 @04:24AM (#49045495) Journal

      Or have a "deadman switch" trigger a script to update it with preset/random stuff, or have some prankster update it for you: http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]

      e.g. Justin Morg: Oops... Looks like I'm dead. Damn... :(
      Tuesday at 10:00pm

      Justin Morg likes 10 ways to tell that you are really dead
      Tuesday at 10:02pm

      Justin Morg: Anyone have a res handy? Urgent!
                              Justin Morg needs a resurrection! Give him one and you'll get HadesVille points!
      Tuesday at 10:13pm via HadesVille

      Justin Morg: Where's the restore from quick-save option when you really really need it. Sigh...
      Tuesday at 10:17pm

      Justin Morg: On the bright side, I guess I don't have to show up for work tomorrow :) @Boss.
      Tuesday at 10:20pm

      Justin Morg: Hmm, wonder what time the funeral will be tomorrow. I'd hate to be late ;). Haha I kill me sometimes (but not this time, it was Professor Plum with the candlestick!).
      Tuesday at 10:32pm

      Justin Morg: I guess I'll call it a night, no point doing the graveyard shift, don't want to be like a zombie tomorrow...
      Tuesday at 10:50pm

      Justin Morg: Good morning! I'm up! OK not so good and not so up. Oh well. At least the mortician made me smile, put stitches in my side too.
      Wednesday at 7:30am

      Justin Morg likes What's worse than waking up early in the morning? Not waking up at all!
      Wednesday at 7:32am

      Justin Morg: I guess I'll skip breakfast, no stomach for it today... But I'd die for a cup of coffee :p.
      Wednesday at 7:35am

      Justin Morg: Wow, people are actually coming to my funeral!
      Wednesday at 8:43am

      Justin Morg likes a minute of silence
      Wednesday at 9:01am

      Justin Morg: Aww don't cry... OK so I'll really be forever in your debt, but hey I did say the payback's gonna be "out of this world" right? XD
      Wednesday at 9:05am

      Justin Morg likes The Sweet By and By
      Wednesday at 9:10am

      Justin Morg: @MaryNotMarried now's the time to ask that pesky aunt "When's your turn" just like she does to you at weddings... Haha!
      Wednesday at 9:13am

      Justin Morg likes short sermons and even shorter skirts
      Wednesday at 9:20am

      Justin Morg: ok Human Torch time!
      Wednesday at 9:30am

      Justin Morg: getting kinda warm in here... I hate stupid ties and suits.
      Wednesday at 9:35am

      Justin Morg: SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSMOKIN'!
      Wednesday at 9:37am

      Justin Morg: Flame on!
      Wednesday at 9:40am

      Justin Morg: The ultimate fat burning program... Watch the pounds melt away. And never come back- 100% guaranteed!
      Wednesday at 9:45am

      Justin Morg: ok I guess I can fit in that sexy "size nothing" urn now... Check out my new curves... Hey guys, I'm coming out of the closet! Just kidding! Don't look like you've just seen a ghost.
      Wednesday at 9:55am

      Justin Morg: It is very dark. I wonder if grues eat ashes.
      Wednesday at 10:00am

      • Facebook Graph API should let you do just that. You just need to have a server that will still be paid up and on the Internet when you're gone.

        Since the Deadman's switch is external to Facebook, you can use whatever method you want to keep pressing the button.

    • I couldn't help noticing your tag line.
      "If you ignore it long enough, eventually the problem just goes away."
      Try that with your taxes and see what happens - I tried, it doesn't work :-(

  • Is there an option (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    To simply delegate removal by someone upon death?

  • the problem here is ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Friday February 13, 2015 @01:59AM (#49045115)

    How do you monetize the page of a dead person?

    • Ads that sell death related products to visitors and relatives. This also becomes just another data point : your age, dead family members and friends, age of the dead when they died, age you had at the moment of their death. Eventually you may get ads for a retirement home when your mom's relatives are dead, ads for death insurance etc. (I'm feeling like a psychopath for writing these awful words..)

      Now, I'd hope f***b**k users receive advertisement for a rope to hang themselves with and quit using the servi

    • The burial/cremation/memorial business is huge money.

  • old problem documented here
    http://xkcd.com/686/ [xkcd.com]

    and obligitory...xkcd

  • Wipe the slate (Score:3)

    by petes_PoV ( 912422 ) on Friday February 13, 2015 @03:59AM (#49045415)
    Why not extend this so that after a period of inactivity (say: a year) the account is automatically wiped - leaving no trace of the user.

    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.

    • Why'd FB throw away all the mined data? And to make things worse, allow you to start over with no connection to all that mined data and the relevant connections made already.

    • You can have FB delete your account after you are marked as memorialized. That's one of the options under that setting.

  • Right to be forgotten? (Score:4, Funny)

    by codeButcher ( 223668 ) on Friday February 13, 2015 @05:15AM (#49045625)

    Now memorialized accounts will have the word "Remembering" hovering above a person's name.

    What about my (presumed) right to be forgotten?

    • Then check the box requesting your account to be deleted when you die.

      Your data (supposedly) goes zap when facebook is notified you're a stiff.

  • That awkward feeling... (Score:3)

    by Katatsumuri ( 1137173 ) on Friday February 13, 2015 @05:44AM (#49045713)
    ...when your social network starts to feel like a cemetery.

  • Hmm (Score:2)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 )
    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."

  • 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...

  • Hopefully (Score:3)

    by AVryhof ( 142320 ) <amos @ v r y h o f r e s earch.com> on Friday February 13, 2015 @07:50AM (#49046011) Homepage

    I'm hoping Facebook will be defunct by the time I kick.

  • 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 [fb.com] example [wordpress.com] is "Remembering" placed above the person's name. No apparent "hovering".

    The words actually used by Facebook are "We’ve also redesigned memorialized profil

  • Facebook Sensitivity...eh. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LaurenCates ( 3410445 ) on Friday February 13, 2015 @09:36AM (#49046379)

    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.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Ah, okay. I read it through the lens of being cross-posted on Slate.

        Which...there's a reason why I don't read that site anymore.

    • 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.

      They could actually do that if they gave us something other than "Like" to show support. - like condolences, sympathies, or some such that shows support for the person but doesn't comment upon the situation itself (or even implies that the situation is negative).

  • 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.

  • 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 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).
  • 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 wer

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