Facebook Adds Legacy Contact Feature In Case You Die Before It Does 80
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.
Let me guess.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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the difference being you don't need a fucking facebook account to vote.
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Yet, you mean?
Just look around how many other things either already outright require you to be part of the cult or at least make it "easier" for you to use it if you are. It would not surprise me at all if something like this is coming down the road somewhere.
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yeah... disturbingly enough, I've missed out on some work because I don't have a Facebook account.
I mean, the fuck happened that people need to willingly give up the right to control their own data to be able to work??
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I mean, the fuck happened that people need to willingly give up the right to control their own data to be able to work??
The internet
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For a job? Hell, I'd create a profile for that. As long as they don't require me to have anything but "I created this account because a prospective employer wants to see a FB account, so here it is" on it...
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My family, education, love, fun and interests are way too important to be put on FB. My job, otoh...
sad but true (Score:2)
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.
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no kidding, those shitty Motorola (XT?)s couldn't penetrate a quarter mile of trees, my guys had Kenwood business radios (thanks largely to me) through deployment training on Dartmoor. Those things were fantastic, not to mention a quarter the size (still got a pair). Even better, if they'd've been out back then, would have been the Yaesu VX-5. Straight through 0-1GHz, digital squelch and voice scrambling, tethered packet data capability, water and dust sealed, MOD specification chassis. I have one of those
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Because we'd prefer to forget.
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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)
Thinking about it, I guess that means it would just make it indistinguishable from most other accounts.
Re:Incorruptable (Score:5, Funny)
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
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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.
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"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
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sure it does. Once you're in prison, with no income, you don't have to pay taxes.
Is there an option (Score:1)
To simply delegate removal by someone upon death?
Re:Is there an option (Score:4, Insightful)
To simply delegate removal by someone upon death?
Leave instructions and your password with your attorney? Or set of attorneys in disparate jurisdictions using Shamir's Secret Sharing, if you're totally paranoid?
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the problem here is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you monetize the page of a dead person?
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Ehh. They would pop the adds when others visited the page.
A friend died last year and about the only way to get updates on the wake and crap was through a facebook tribute page. They didn't have the public wake right away and was trying to coordinate all his reletives from out of state to be present. They also scanned and posted a shitload of photos and you needed to use facebook to get copies. Thankfully, they requested nobody tags anyone in the photos other than the deceased (some interested people had wa
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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
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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?
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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.
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old problem (Score:2)
old problem documented here
http://xkcd.com/686/ [xkcd.com]
and obligitory...xkcd
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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.
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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
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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.
Wipe the slate (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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You can have FB delete your account after you are marked as memorialized. That's one of the options under that setting.
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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.
Right to be forgotten? (Score:4, Funny)
Now memorialized accounts will have the word "Remembering" hovering above a person's name.
What about my (presumed) right to be forgotten?
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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.
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So it's finally possible? You can actually make FB delete your data and all you have to do is preten... I mean, is die?
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I have here this death certificate from Generistan, I died there...
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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?
That awkward feeling... (Score:3)
Hmm (Score:2)
Advertising to the Dead (Score:2)
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)
I'm hoping Facebook will be defunct by the time I kick.
Hovering? Tasteful? (Score:1)
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)
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.
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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.
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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).
Great (Score:1)
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.
Internet Facebook Archive (Score:2)
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.
Zombies (Score:2)
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.
Must That Person Be on Facebook? (Score:1)
Not well thought out. (Score:1)