Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might not be too pleasant to read the last status updates of someone who was depressed and committed suicide for example
pleasant isn't the point.
No, but respectful is.
Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#22Hm: When reporting a death, users must offer "proof" by submitting either an obituary or news article. So, gothic entrepreneurs [1], here's a startup business case for you: Figure out how to run the business which provides the service that newspaper obits provide. [2] Because the newspapers aren't going to be around to do it for much longer. --- [1] Only tasteful gothic entrepreneurs, please. Working with this idea i…
My first thought is...what's the easiest way to make a fake obituary so that I can prank my friends and get their profiles marked as memorialized? This is going to happen, and it's going to happen a lot.
gonna be hard for that to work if your friend updates their status message in the time that you reported them deceased and the days it takes facebook to get around to looking in to it..
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I think it's going to take a long time to get the tone just right. But technology may not wait for human protocols to catch up. It would be very easy, for instance, for me to write a program that visited various forums and posted jokes. This bot could run in the cloud. In fact, people are already doing similar things. Right now it's just static content, and content owned by one service, so we can look to that…
Technology has not waited. People need memorial rituals. I realized this the other week, when we held such a ritual on HN. I can't physically get to a funeral for everyone I now know. And that's too bad, because funerals are good for people. You need a way to memorialize someone, preferably by gathering in a place, and preferably with a strong ritual component, like the lighting of candles or the gathering around a g…
I'm the editor of an online magazine (volunteer-based, no ads) that allows comments. On a few occasions when we've posted reports on deaths, those reports have attracted comments from people who knew the deceased and wanted to leave a message somewhere.
It's strange and touching that a site intended to discuss urban issues might also serve as a de facto online memorial, but there you have it: people will find their own uses for any reasonably open system.
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#24I wanted to know beforehand how to delete a Facebook account permanently
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1522294/how_to_quit...
and shared log-in information with immediate family members, so that we can decide what stays up and what gets deleted if one of us dies.
Based on other Internet businesses I have dealt with over the years, I think it is a lot more likely that my Facebook info will be permanently lost than that I will die while Facebook is still a going business, but I could be wrong.
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#25At first blush, this seems cheesy, but it's the wave of the future. Pieces of dead people are going to persist more and more on the net. The pieces will become more and more interactive and eventually dead people will outnumber living people on the net. Sounds strange, but that's the trend.
It's just hard to get the tone just right. Obviously, they need to handle dead people's pages somehow. But they don't want to look like they are profiting off of it, either. They certainly don't want to seem like they are "memorialising" the deceased just as a way to keep getting ad impressions for someone even after they are gone.
Lots of people create web pages for the deceased where visitors can add comments to. This seems like an obvious thing for Facebook to do.
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#26Your Friend is now dead.
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#27Your Friend is now dead.
Surely it'll be a news item:
"Fred changed his status from Living to Dead!"
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#28Why would they remove status updates? I could see myself wanting to go back and read through a deceased friend's online history, just to remember.
I think they should allow the next-of-kin to choose what they want memorialized, what they want kept private (or perhaps family-only) and what they want destroyed. I would imagine most families would want to keep the deceased's status messages, but not all of them (in cases of suicide, for example, as riklomas pointed out).
If I died, I wouldn't want my parents to have access to my Facebook page.
Re: Facebook 'memorialises' profiles
#29Hm: When reporting a death, users must offer "proof" by submitting either an obituary or news article. So, gothic entrepreneurs [1], here's a startup business case for you: Figure out how to run the business which provides the service that newspaper obits provide. [2] Because the newspapers aren't going to be around to do it for much longer. --- [1] Only tasteful gothic entrepreneurs, please. Working with this idea i…
[2] Obituaries cost a lot to publish...
I just finished reading Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers. It's written by three obituarists, for obituarists. (I'm not a journalist or an obituarist.) It's not officially out of print, but the publisher has none on hand and I had to check it out of the library.
It's about the business and practice of the obituary desk. It addresses fact checking, the peculiar difficulties of fact checking with grieving relatives, and the minor disasters that arise from leaving that out. Fascinating book, a peek into a job we probably don't think about.
On that grim note, I can also recommend Obit by Jim Sheeler, one of the co-authors of Death Beat. It's a collection of some of his best obituaries. He wrote for the Denver Post and the recently deceased Rocky Mountain news, among others.