9 ms·

What Should Happen to People’s Online Identity When They Die?

135 points by kawera 9y ago

ams6110 9y ago
Online doesn't really make anything much different. When a loved one dies, you grieve, and eventually come to terms with it and move on. You get bills, letters, Christmas cards, junk mail, etc. for a while after the person is gone. Charities are the worst. I still get letters from various charties, addressed to my mother who has been dead for nine years. Facebook doesn't really change things, much as they might like to believe that people's lives hinge on their service.
- danso 9y ago
  That seems an overly simplistic way to look at things. Everything about computation isn't "much different" since it's literally built on a system of switches and logic gates. It's the scalability and speed that makes the difference, I mean, that's arguably why Facebook.com became a thing even though "face books" at Harvard have existed for years/decades [0]. In the case of death, there's the "new" issue that someone's Facebook account is basically an instantly-worldwide-accessible and permanent gravesite when they die. In the case of sudden death, there's a real issue of what that person would want on what's become an ad-hoc memorial site for perpetuity. And because it's a web service, there's the technical issue of access control, along with all the legal issues that have been around since the pre-Internet days. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book
averagewall 9y ago
I don't think privacy is a new problem. When my dad died, he left piles of personal pen-and-paper letters from his former wife and girlfriends that they probably would have preferred strangers didn't read. He was a therapist and also left confidential client information containing, for instance, interviews with child sex abuse victims for court cases. This is a problem in general when you trust something to someone to keep confidential. When they die, it becomes part of their estate and it's not confidential anymore. I don't see why data stored in online services should be any different from data stored on your computer in your house. With the cloud, it's sometimes not clear where it's being stored anyway.
- TimPC 9y ago
  The problem as a whole isn't new, but it's ramped up to a new level and applied more broadly. If your estate doesn't have provisions for handling your Facebook account in it, it will get left up on the Interwebs. And some of the distant friends who forget because of old age or were so distant they never really knew the person past away will continue to write happy birthday wishes, year after year. Those wishes will end up being seen by people directly affected by the death, year after year. It's not a desirable experience. I think the big challenge here is at the intersection of how we'd like the privacy of data to change on passing for data that was previously semi-public or widely shared which is new (In some sense the data is out there and can't be changed but platforms often govern how we experience the interactions around it). The problem you describe is kind of the opposite -- how does confidential data stay confidential. The other direction is sort of new, and isn't as much a data/information problem as an interaction one.
  - ch4ch4 9y ago
    I don't understand this desire to make the Internet a "Safe Space" which doesn't offend anyone. The Internet is inherently "unsafe". If you can't stomach the thought of someone wishing a happy birthday to a dead dude, why not just let them know that the person is deceased? As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. No estate or court order can decrypt that data.
    - mmcwilliams 9y ago
      I don't think what you're responding to is a desire to create a "safe space", but is actually pointing out a bad user experience. If an unintended consequence of your product is that it reminds users of deceased friends and relatives at inopportune times or in uncomfortable ways, I think it's worth exploring solutions to that.
    - will_brown 9y ago
      >As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. That is not an answer solution to many issues. For example, I am an attorney and sole practitioner, if I were to die unexpectedly my clients would be entitled to get their case files, confidential/privileged/work product documentation can't just disappear upon my death and as others have suggested my estate could be liable for that just as likely as my estate could be liable for the same documents being release to any 3rd party. Separate and apart from liability I could simply prejudice my clients case in the instance of litigation either due loss of documentation or disclosure of the same to 3rd parties. And these are not just hypotheticals, I worked in an office building where another attorney died unexpectedly of a heart attacker while driving, and there was no real procedure in place, simply many in the building rallied and took the case files and helped his clients, but who knows what documentation was lost and never recovered, alternatively there was very likely all kinds of breaches of professional responsibility and liability exposure, despite the realities of the legal community rallying and doing their best in a bad situation.
sahin-boydas 9y ago
caprica :)))
whiddershins 9y ago
They are prioritizing the wishes of the dead over those of the living. If the wife wants to friend the dead husband, I don't think it's so important "what he would have wanted." They should prioritize the wishes of the next of kin, or executrix of his will, or whomever our traditions and legal system has figured out can make this decision. We as a society came to these practices over many generations. They exist for a reason, and the way this is phrased, it seems Facebook is putting themselves in the position of reinventing the wheel for whatever reasons they have. Which may or may not be in the interests of the survivors of the deceased.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The whole concept of a will is about respecting the wishes of the dead.
  - honestoHeminway 9y ago
    What if someone crafted a paper version of a DAO in his will, setting his fortune into motion- a undying golem made from papyrus and money... he is gone, but it lives.
  - uiri 9y ago
    No it's not. The initial property division is done by a will because it is the only neutral way to decide who is to divide up an estate and how they are supposed to do it. If Bob leaves his boat to his daughter Charlotte instead of his son David, that is much cleaner than having David and Charlotte fighting over it. After the estate is settled, the heirs are free to do whatever they want with their inherited property. If Charlotte didn't really care for the boat but David really wanted it, she is free to sell it to him or gift it outright. Or she can sell it to a third party. Charlotte shouldn't feel guilty or pressured by a dead man to enjoy the boat.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      You are just choosing a precise meaning for "wishes" and hammering on that. Look at the context and consider a scenario where a will has a statement that Facebook should be deleted (or frozen or whatever). The comment I replied to implies the statement shouldn't matter if someone living wants something else. My meaning was something like the whole concept of a will is about respecting and recognizing the priorities expressed by the dead. I don't disagree with what you say about what people do with things they inherit, but you are imputing an awful lot of meaning to make that a contradiction of my sentence that I posted above.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 9y ago
It passes to the heirs as described in deceased's will.
shinamee 9y ago
This is a very important topic, in fact, I was almost making a service that would somehow help people share their online identities/access to their next of kin if such incident should occur. Unfortunately, the feedbacks wasn't so good, I had to shut it down. I don't think any SINGLE social media company can solve this.
danso 9y ago
The Facebook paper on this topic ("Legacy Contact: Designing and implementing stewardship at Facebook") is one of my favorites from their publications repo. Not highly-technical, but relatively detailed as it explores the human side of the design tradeoffs needed to accommodate an unavoidably difficult and varied situation: https://research.fb.com/publications/legacy-contact-designing-and-implementing-stewardship-at-facebook/ https://research.fb.com/publications/legacy-contact-designin...
erik_landerholm 9y ago
Specify in a will if you care.
beters 9y ago
Despite appearances, Facebook is not impartial to this question whatsoever. They would profit greatly from keeping dead people's profiles on their site.
- ucha 9y ago
  How would they profit greatly?
  - tuxt 9y ago
    1. keep the profile. 2. ??? 3. profit
  - danso 9y ago
    Maybe "greatly" is too strong a word but it definitely helps to cement Facebook as the clearinghouse of memories, both for the living and dead.
- milog 9y ago
  Not sure if they would profit greatly, because they can't target dead people with their ads.
  - infogulch 9y ago
    Loved ones and friends still respond strongly to the presence of a dead person. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if friends of dead people incur more engagement than people when they were alive (sadly).
    - kawera 9y ago
      Related: "Connective recovery in social networks after the death of a friend" - https://research.fb.com/publications/connective-recovery-in-social-networks-after-the-death-of-a-friend/ https://research.fb.com/publications/connective-recovery-in-...
  - zecg 9y ago
    "Your father would have appreciated the smoother new taste of Generic Cola Light."
sp_nster 9y ago
In all seriousness, I thumbs up (on LinkedIn) the birthday of a colleague who passed away a couple of years ago.
drewmol 9y ago
The answer is clear: the data should be monitized in a way that best minimizes the potential creation of social or political sentiment to create roadblocks which may diminish future monitization of similar data.
- exodust 9y ago
  Read it twice. Not clear.
dbg31415 9y ago
I've got a deadman switch with my password manager. A week after I don't respond, my trusted friend has instructions to go in and delete everything. Also to take a power drill to my laptops and home NAS. It all becomes info out of context, photos and conversations between people whose confidence I would keep in life. Has value to me, but it should all be burnt when I go.
stronglikedan 9y ago
Maybe it should become part of the estate, but I don't know enough about that to say how. If it's part of a will then honor that, otherwise it the next of kin or whatever who decides what to do with it (in a limited fashion that prevents identity theft - maybe freeze it or delete it being the only options).
maerF0x0 9y ago
The story at the beginning is so incredibly sad. We need to connect as much as we can while we're alive. Not through facebook. So that we have minimal/no regrets once its too late.
losteverything 9y ago
They need to establish a policy for 3 or 4 or 5 generations from now. Like the us government allowing old census data but not new. As a genealogy fan with known roots spanning centuries, at some point there no longer is any connection or feeling to a ggggf or gggg aunt. I absolutely CRAVE to learn what life was like for my family. Why did one uncle hunt and send birds eggs overseas? Or one gggggm rode horseback to come to aid revolutionary soldiers? What battle? Facebook probably will just be an archive 120 years from now. But a extreme long term policy will assist future genealogists. Something like "after 80 years past the death, all fb related data is available." after 25 years its available to direct line descendants.
- newscracker 9y ago
  > Facebook probably will just be an archive 120 years from now. But a extreme long term policy will assist future genealogists. Something like "after 80 years past the death, all fb related data is available." after 25 years its available to direct line descendants. This sounds highly troubling to me. Imagine being persecuted in your life because some ggggm whom you never knew about was an extremist (racist and what not - let your imagination run wild on how despicable that person was during their time). Your craving to learn about your family decades or centuries ago must not become an overriding factor for the entire society to abide by. The "right to be forgotten" [1], though not perfect, has a lot of value for humans. On Facebook specifically, it is a highly buggy platform. Even as of yesterday, I couldn't get search to find recent content that I knew was there. I had to resort to other (slower and cumbersome) ways of finding it. This has been a long standing problem (several years). Content discovery in Facebook is terrible, and hence assuming Facebook to be the custodian of one's life experiences is a very, very poor choice, in my observation. Facebook is not the platform for archival! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
  - williamscales 9y ago
    > This sounds highly troubling to me. Imagine being persecuted in your life because some ggggm whom you never knew about was an extremist (racist and what not - let your imagination run wild on how despicable that person was during their time). Your craving to learn about your family decades or centuries ago must not become an overriding factor for the entire society to abide by. The "right to be forgotten" [1], though not perfect, has a lot of value for humans. That's a really great point. I wonder though - if the archive is this thorough and the attitude for which the relative is now being persecuted was widespread at the time, won't the archive be able to prove the counterpoint that the hypothetical ggggm was similar to most other people?
fenesiistvan 9y ago
Why they don't just ask it while the account owner is still alive? There should be some settings for this. Some people might also pay for such a service (keep my account for 100 years for $99).
- tonyztan 9y ago
  They do allow users to indicate their preferences. "Memorialization is our default action, but we know that some people might not want their account preserved this way. They might prefer that we delete their profile. Recognizing this, we give people a way to let us know they want their account permanently deleted when they die. We may also delete profiles when the next of kin tells us that the deceased loved one would have preferred that we delete the account rather than memorialize it. Other people might want a friend or family member to be able to manage their profile as a memorial site after their death. That’s why in 2015, we created the option for people to choose a legacy contact. A legacy contact is a family member or friend who can manage certain features on your account if you pass away, such as changing your profile picture, accepting friend requests or adding a pinned post to the top of your profile. They can also elect to delete your account."
developer2 9y ago
To put it bluntly: fuck the living. It's impossible to please every living relative and close friend. The solution with Facebook is simple: if you don't want to have a deceased person showing up on your feed, unfriend them and add them to your block list. Assuming Facebook is well-designed, blocking someone should prevent them from ever showing up in your feed, even if others are tagging them in photos or posting to their wall. As for your being aware that "the profile is still there and other people are interacting with it", get over it. It's not your place to dictate how others should deal with the death. You have the choice to not look; so don't look if you don't want to. Lack of self-control to not check back every month to see what other people are doing is not a valid reason to nuke the profile from orbit. Speaking to the internet at large: the only way to mandate how companies must respond to news of a death would require tying every single page load on the internet to an official government ID. Nobody wants to provide their government ID to ThePirateBay and PornHub just so that their entire online identity can uniformly vanish upon death. How many people burn their photo albums when a loved one dies, in order to remove all traces of that person? Nobody. Why should the digital equivalent be any different? More simply, why should an online presence be terminated? Just... "why?". I suspect every attempted answer to that question is born of self-centred excuses that have no merit; ie: based on "I" or "me" - "I don't want to be reminded", "It pains me to see", etc. tldr; The whole think stinks of "Won't somebody think of the children?!", but instead it's "Won't somebody think of me me me me me?!". The level of absurdity seems equivalent to me.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
denisehilton 9y ago
All Internet history of individuals who die should be removed. There should also be regard for self-respect even in technology.
- white-flame 9y ago
  Plenty of people have left important and informative publicly posted content, commonly linked to by others. Automatically removing those from the net would be a massive disservice to the deceased, eliminating the fruit of their work & passions and their voice from history.
williamscales 9y ago
Write down your password manager master password in your will along with instructions about what to do when you die.
- xxXXxx- 9y ago
  And assume your family knows exactly how to do whatever you want? What about 2FA?
  - codingdave 9y ago
    I include as much information as I can in my "What to do if I die" documentation that my wife has. But much of the stuff that has 2FA is also paid, so it falls under the category of, "Just cancel my credit card, and the accounts will disappear on their own."
    - joshfarrant 9y ago
      That's an interesting idea, care to elaborate on the documentation a bit more?
      - codingdave 9y ago
        It is a list of the various accounts I have that would need action. Mostly, I instruct her to decide for herself what she wants to do with my web sites and email addresses, but I give her enough info to gain access to it all, and recommend which accounts should be switched to her credit card instead of mine (Netflix, for example.) It doesn't list everything -- this HN account for example, is not mentioned, and would just go silent. I also list out who needs to be informed -- who to contact directly by phone, who to email. It isn't intended to be a will - it is more a list of the little details of my life that are not part of our shared existence, that would probably be forgotten in the turmoil, so I thought of them ahead of time. I look at it a few times a year and keep it up to date. And I hope it is a wasted effort.
- gkya 9y ago
  :) My family treats my laptop like nuclear waste. I think they kind-a fear it.
rbrbr 9y ago
With just having read the headline and not the article or the comments here, my comment on this question is: People don't die online, they remain until all electric devices storing their digital existence cease to exist.
rajeshmr 9y ago
why not provide a tool like google to self-destruct profile if not logged in within a time frame ? Why is facebook taking the pain of resolving conflicts and becoming a mediator and judge etc ? Instead of giving the profile owners with tools to control what should happen in case of death or inactivity for a long period (like google?) ?
- nicky0 9y ago
  Facebook does provide these very tools. In settings, you can appoint a legacy contact and/or you can state what you want to happen to your profile when you die.
ge96 9y ago
There's a green LED on somewhere, and when I die, it stays on for a second, then fades.
Bitto 9y ago
Okay, this is going to sound stupid. May be someone would like to receive a "Merry Xmas and happy new year" or "Happy b'day" message from their lost loved ones. FB should give me an option to do that before i die. May be a checkbox somewhere in the settings. [ ] send wishes automatically if inactive for 1 year
- losteverything 9y ago
  I totally agree, but based on the reaction to this guys christmas cards after he died [1] this idea is not received well (which i dont understand). You are thinking about loved ones in the future by your request. I doube FB would go for it. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22394223/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/dead-man-sends-cards-heaven/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22394223/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/d...
Angostura 9y ago
The answer seems simple. Add a clause to your will.
CryptoFascist 9y ago
Simple. Express in your will that you wish your social media account credentials to be posted to 4chan, or whatever the equivalent of the day is, with instructions to 'have at it, jerks'. That way, your online identity gets to be like Jim Morrison's grave.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Jimbo's grave usually has an empty bottle with a rose in it. Plus sometimes a threesome of cute hippies, if it's an abnormally warm night. I believe 4chan has neither the taste nor the means to make something like that happen.
specialist 9y ago
A dead coworker's Facebook profile was hijacked, started spamming. It was very distressing. Minimally: Subscribe to the SSA Death Registry (or local equivalent), integrate the data. Set a flag in (potentially) matching profile(s). Put account into some kind of "might be dead" probationary state, for further adjudication. Having worked on both medical and voter registration records, this is normal activity. Social media, email hosts, etc, should do the same.
DanBC 9y ago
> Depending on the circumstances of a person’s death, those online reminders can be overwhelming. A mother who loses her daughter to domestic violence may feel sick when she looks online and sees photos of her daughter’s wedding day > When people come to Facebook after suffering a loss, we want them to feel comfort, not pain, Lying cunts. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hollie-gazzard-facebook-refuses-to-remove-photograph-of-murder-victim-posing-with-killer-ex-a6711611.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hollie-gazzar... > The family of a young hairdresser murdered in a savage attack by her ex-boyfriend have repeatedly appealed to Facebook to remove photographs of the pair together. > Nine images of Hollie Gazzard, 20, who was stabbed 14 times by Asher Maslin in February last year, are still visible online. (They have, eventually, removed the images).
hyperman1 9y ago
A few years ago my brother died, unexpectedly, in his thirties, in a neighbour country. He travelled a lot and had friends all over the planet. We didn't know most of them. Their email adresses were probably in his gmail account, so we thought to get it assigned to us. Procedure is in this page: https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?hl=nl#ts=6357650 https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?h... . The problem: It asks for a court order in the united states. No idea why the courts are even involved in this case, it seems like a basic civic issue, but the US seems to do a lot by court. Or not, I don't actually know. So here we are, in grief, far from home, burial in a week, horrible mess to sort out, and google wants some legal papers from some court half the planet away, in a completely alien legal system where I even don't know what my basic rights are. Even if google has local presence in all of the countrys involved. No chance to fix that in a week. I hope like hell we found most of his important friends. Even so, if any googler happens to read this: Please fix that. I know you cant' give access to random strangers, but there's got to be a better way, involving at least the local legal system.
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135 points by kawera 9y ago

Online doesn't really make anything much different. When a loved one dies, you grieve, and eventually come to terms with it and move on. You get bills, letters, Christmas cards, junk mail, etc. for a while after the person is gone. Charities are the worst. I still get letters from various charties, addressed to my mother who has been dead for nine years. Facebook doesn't really change things, much as they might like to believe that people's lives hinge on their service.

danso 9y ago
That seems an overly simplistic way to look at things. Everything about computation isn't "much different" since it's literally built on a system of switches and logic gates. It's the scalability and speed that makes the difference, I mean, that's arguably why Facebook.com became a thing even though "face books" at Harvard have existed for years/decades [0]. In the case of death, there's the "new" issue that someone's Facebook account is basically an instantly-worldwide-accessible and permanent gravesite when they die. In the case of sudden death, there's a real issue of what that person would want on what's become an ad-hoc memorial site for perpetuity. And because it's a web service, there's the technical issue of access control, along with all the legal issues that have been around since the pre-Internet days. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book

averagewall 9y ago

I don't think privacy is a new problem. When my dad died, he left piles of personal pen-and-paper letters from his former wife and girlfriends that they probably would have preferred strangers didn't read. He was a therapist and also left confidential client information containing, for instance, interviews with child sex abuse victims for court cases. This is a problem in general when you trust something to someone to keep confidential. When they die, it becomes part of their estate and it's not confidential anymore. I don't see why data stored in online services should be any different from data stored on your computer in your house. With the cloud, it's sometimes not clear where it's being stored anyway.

TimPC 9y ago
The problem as a whole isn't new, but it's ramped up to a new level and applied more broadly. If your estate doesn't have provisions for handling your Facebook account in it, it will get left up on the Interwebs. And some of the distant friends who forget because of old age or were so distant they never really knew the person past away will continue to write happy birthday wishes, year after year. Those wishes will end up being seen by people directly affected by the death, year after year. It's not a desirable experience. I think the big challenge here is at the intersection of how we'd like the privacy of data to change on passing for data that was previously semi-public or widely shared which is new (In some sense the data is out there and can't be changed but platforms often govern how we experience the interactions around it). The problem you describe is kind of the opposite -- how does confidential data stay confidential. The other direction is sort of new, and isn't as much a data/information problem as an interaction one.
- ch4ch4 9y ago
  I don't understand this desire to make the Internet a "Safe Space" which doesn't offend anyone. The Internet is inherently "unsafe". If you can't stomach the thought of someone wishing a happy birthday to a dead dude, why not just let them know that the person is deceased? As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. No estate or court order can decrypt that data.
  - mmcwilliams 9y ago
    I don't think what you're responding to is a desire to create a "safe space", but is actually pointing out a bad user experience. If an unintended consequence of your product is that it reminds users of deceased friends and relatives at inopportune times or in uncomfortable ways, I think it's worth exploring solutions to that.
  - will_brown 9y ago
    >As for confidential data, it should be encrypted at rest, so that the decryption key disappears along with the deceased. That is not an answer solution to many issues. For example, I am an attorney and sole practitioner, if I were to die unexpectedly my clients would be entitled to get their case files, confidential/privileged/work product documentation can't just disappear upon my death and as others have suggested my estate could be liable for that just as likely as my estate could be liable for the same documents being release to any 3rd party. Separate and apart from liability I could simply prejudice my clients case in the instance of litigation either due loss of documentation or disclosure of the same to 3rd parties. And these are not just hypotheticals, I worked in an office building where another attorney died unexpectedly of a heart attacker while driving, and there was no real procedure in place, simply many in the building rallied and took the case files and helped his clients, but who knows what documentation was lost and never recovered, alternatively there was very likely all kinds of breaches of professional responsibility and liability exposure, despite the realities of the legal community rallying and doing their best in a bad situation.

sahin-boydas 9y ago

caprica :)))

whiddershins 9y ago

They are prioritizing the wishes of the dead over those of the living. If the wife wants to friend the dead husband, I don't think it's so important "what he would have wanted." They should prioritize the wishes of the next of kin, or executrix of his will, or whomever our traditions and legal system has figured out can make this decision. We as a society came to these practices over many generations. They exist for a reason, and the way this is phrased, it seems Facebook is putting themselves in the position of reinventing the wheel for whatever reasons they have. Which may or may not be in the interests of the survivors of the deceased.

maxerickson 9y ago
The whole concept of a will is about respecting the wishes of the dead.
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  What if someone crafted a paper version of a DAO in his will, setting his fortune into motion- a undying golem made from papyrus and money... he is gone, but it lives.
- uiri 9y ago
  No it's not. The initial property division is done by a will because it is the only neutral way to decide who is to divide up an estate and how they are supposed to do it. If Bob leaves his boat to his daughter Charlotte instead of his son David, that is much cleaner than having David and Charlotte fighting over it. After the estate is settled, the heirs are free to do whatever they want with their inherited property. If Charlotte didn't really care for the boat but David really wanted it, she is free to sell it to him or gift it outright. Or she can sell it to a third party. Charlotte shouldn't feel guilty or pressured by a dead man to enjoy the boat.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    You are just choosing a precise meaning for "wishes" and hammering on that. Look at the context and consider a scenario where a will has a statement that Facebook should be deleted (or frozen or whatever). The comment I replied to implies the statement shouldn't matter if someone living wants something else. My meaning was something like the whole concept of a will is about respecting and recognizing the priorities expressed by the dead. I don't disagree with what you say about what people do with things they inherit, but you are imputing an awful lot of meaning to make that a contradiction of my sentence that I posted above.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

WalterBright 9y ago

It passes to the heirs as described in deceased's will.

shinamee 9y ago

This is a very important topic, in fact, I was almost making a service that would somehow help people share their online identities/access to their next of kin if such incident should occur. Unfortunately, the feedbacks wasn't so good, I had to shut it down. I don't think any SINGLE social media company can solve this.

danso 9y ago

The Facebook paper on this topic ("Legacy Contact: Designing and implementing stewardship at Facebook") is one of my favorites from their publications repo. Not highly-technical, but relatively detailed as it explores the human side of the design tradeoffs needed to accommodate an unavoidably difficult and varied situation: https://research.fb.com/publications/legacy-contact-designing-and-implementing-stewardship-at-facebook/ https://research.fb.com/publications/legacy-contact-designin...

erik_landerholm 9y ago

Specify in a will if you care.

beters 9y ago

Despite appearances, Facebook is not impartial to this question whatsoever. They would profit greatly from keeping dead people's profiles on their site.

ucha 9y ago
How would they profit greatly?
- tuxt 9y ago
  1. keep the profile. 2. ??? 3. profit
- danso 9y ago
  Maybe "greatly" is too strong a word but it definitely helps to cement Facebook as the clearinghouse of memories, both for the living and dead.
milog 9y ago
Not sure if they would profit greatly, because they can't target dead people with their ads.
- infogulch 9y ago
  Loved ones and friends still respond strongly to the presence of a dead person. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if friends of dead people incur more engagement than people when they were alive (sadly).
  - kawera 9y ago
    Related: "Connective recovery in social networks after the death of a friend" - https://research.fb.com/publications/connective-recovery-in-social-networks-after-the-death-of-a-friend/ https://research.fb.com/publications/connective-recovery-in-...
- zecg 9y ago
  "Your father would have appreciated the smoother new taste of Generic Cola Light."

sp_nster 9y ago

In all seriousness, I thumbs up (on LinkedIn) the birthday of a colleague who passed away a couple of years ago.

drewmol 9y ago

The answer is clear: the data should be monitized in a way that best minimizes the potential creation of social or political sentiment to create roadblocks which may diminish future monitization of similar data.

exodust 9y ago
Read it twice. Not clear.

dbg31415 9y ago

I've got a deadman switch with my password manager. A week after I don't respond, my trusted friend has instructions to go in and delete everything. Also to take a power drill to my laptops and home NAS. It all becomes info out of context, photos and conversations between people whose confidence I would keep in life. Has value to me, but it should all be burnt when I go.

stronglikedan 9y ago

Maybe it should become part of the estate, but I don't know enough about that to say how. If it's part of a will then honor that, otherwise it the next of kin or whatever who decides what to do with it (in a limited fashion that prevents identity theft - maybe freeze it or delete it being the only options).

maerF0x0 9y ago

The story at the beginning is so incredibly sad. We need to connect as much as we can while we're alive. Not through facebook. So that we have minimal/no regrets once its too late.

losteverything 9y ago

They need to establish a policy for 3 or 4 or 5 generations from now. Like the us government allowing old census data but not new. As a genealogy fan with known roots spanning centuries, at some point there no longer is any connection or feeling to a ggggf or gggg aunt. I absolutely CRAVE to learn what life was like for my family. Why did one uncle hunt and send birds eggs overseas? Or one gggggm rode horseback to come to aid revolutionary soldiers? What battle? Facebook probably will just be an archive 120 years from now. But a extreme long term policy will assist future genealogists. Something like "after 80 years past the death, all fb related data is available." after 25 years its available to direct line descendants.

newscracker 9y ago
> Facebook probably will just be an archive 120 years from now. But a extreme long term policy will assist future genealogists. Something like "after 80 years past the death, all fb related data is available." after 25 years its available to direct line descendants. This sounds highly troubling to me. Imagine being persecuted in your life because some ggggm whom you never knew about was an extremist (racist and what not - let your imagination run wild on how despicable that person was during their time). Your craving to learn about your family decades or centuries ago must not become an overriding factor for the entire society to abide by. The "right to be forgotten" [1], though not perfect, has a lot of value for humans. On Facebook specifically, it is a highly buggy platform. Even as of yesterday, I couldn't get search to find recent content that I knew was there. I had to resort to other (slower and cumbersome) ways of finding it. This has been a long standing problem (several years). Content discovery in Facebook is terrible, and hence assuming Facebook to be the custodian of one's life experiences is a very, very poor choice, in my observation. Facebook is not the platform for archival! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
- williamscales 9y ago
  > This sounds highly troubling to me. Imagine being persecuted in your life because some ggggm whom you never knew about was an extremist (racist and what not - let your imagination run wild on how despicable that person was during their time). Your craving to learn about your family decades or centuries ago must not become an overriding factor for the entire society to abide by. The "right to be forgotten" [1], though not perfect, has a lot of value for humans. That's a really great point. I wonder though - if the archive is this thorough and the attitude for which the relative is now being persecuted was widespread at the time, won't the archive be able to prove the counterpoint that the hypothetical ggggm was similar to most other people?

fenesiistvan 9y ago

Why they don't just ask it while the account owner is still alive? There should be some settings for this. Some people might also pay for such a service (keep my account for 100 years for $99).

tonyztan 9y ago
They do allow users to indicate their preferences. "Memorialization is our default action, but we know that some people might not want their account preserved this way. They might prefer that we delete their profile. Recognizing this, we give people a way to let us know they want their account permanently deleted when they die. We may also delete profiles when the next of kin tells us that the deceased loved one would have preferred that we delete the account rather than memorialize it. Other people might want a friend or family member to be able to manage their profile as a memorial site after their death. That’s why in 2015, we created the option for people to choose a legacy contact. A legacy contact is a family member or friend who can manage certain features on your account if you pass away, such as changing your profile picture, accepting friend requests or adding a pinned post to the top of your profile. They can also elect to delete your account."

developer2 9y ago

To put it bluntly: fuck the living. It's impossible to please every living relative and close friend. The solution with Facebook is simple: if you don't want to have a deceased person showing up on your feed, unfriend them and add them to your block list. Assuming Facebook is well-designed, blocking someone should prevent them from ever showing up in your feed, even if others are tagging them in photos or posting to their wall. As for your being aware that "the profile is still there and other people are interacting with it", get over it. It's not your place to dictate how others should deal with the death. You have the choice to not look; so don't look if you don't want to. Lack of self-control to not check back every month to see what other people are doing is not a valid reason to nuke the profile from orbit. Speaking to the internet at large: the only way to mandate how companies must respond to news of a death would require tying every single page load on the internet to an official government ID. Nobody wants to provide their government ID to ThePirateBay and PornHub just so that their entire online identity can uniformly vanish upon death. How many people burn their photo albums when a loved one dies, in order to remove all traces of that person? Nobody. Why should the digital equivalent be any different? More simply, why should an online presence be terminated? Just... "why?". I suspect every attempted answer to that question is born of self-centred excuses that have no merit; ie: based on "I" or "me" - "I don't want to be reminded", "It pains me to see", etc. tldr; The whole think stinks of "Won't somebody think of the children?!", but instead it's "Won't somebody think of me me me me me?!". The level of absurdity seems equivalent to me.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

denisehilton 9y ago

All Internet history of individuals who die should be removed. There should also be regard for self-respect even in technology.

white-flame 9y ago
Plenty of people have left important and informative publicly posted content, commonly linked to by others. Automatically removing those from the net would be a massive disservice to the deceased, eliminating the fruit of their work & passions and their voice from history.

williamscales 9y ago

Write down your password manager master password in your will along with instructions about what to do when you die.

xxXXxx- 9y ago
And assume your family knows exactly how to do whatever you want? What about 2FA?
- codingdave 9y ago
  I include as much information as I can in my "What to do if I die" documentation that my wife has. But much of the stuff that has 2FA is also paid, so it falls under the category of, "Just cancel my credit card, and the accounts will disappear on their own."
  - joshfarrant 9y ago
    That's an interesting idea, care to elaborate on the documentation a bit more?
    - codingdave 9y ago
      It is a list of the various accounts I have that would need action. Mostly, I instruct her to decide for herself what she wants to do with my web sites and email addresses, but I give her enough info to gain access to it all, and recommend which accounts should be switched to her credit card instead of mine (Netflix, for example.) It doesn't list everything -- this HN account for example, is not mentioned, and would just go silent. I also list out who needs to be informed -- who to contact directly by phone, who to email. It isn't intended to be a will - it is more a list of the little details of my life that are not part of our shared existence, that would probably be forgotten in the turmoil, so I thought of them ahead of time. I look at it a few times a year and keep it up to date. And I hope it is a wasted effort.
gkya 9y ago
:) My family treats my laptop like nuclear waste. I think they kind-a fear it.

rbrbr 9y ago

With just having read the headline and not the article or the comments here, my comment on this question is: People don't die online, they remain until all electric devices storing their digital existence cease to exist.

rajeshmr 9y ago

why not provide a tool like google to self-destruct profile if not logged in within a time frame ? Why is facebook taking the pain of resolving conflicts and becoming a mediator and judge etc ? Instead of giving the profile owners with tools to control what should happen in case of death or inactivity for a long period (like google?) ?

nicky0 9y ago
Facebook does provide these very tools. In settings, you can appoint a legacy contact and/or you can state what you want to happen to your profile when you die.

ge96 9y ago

There's a green LED on somewhere, and when I die, it stays on for a second, then fades.

Bitto 9y ago

Okay, this is going to sound stupid. May be someone would like to receive a "Merry Xmas and happy new year" or "Happy b'day" message from their lost loved ones. FB should give me an option to do that before i die. May be a checkbox somewhere in the settings. [ ] send wishes automatically if inactive for 1 year

losteverything 9y ago
I totally agree, but based on the reaction to this guys christmas cards after he died [1] this idea is not received well (which i dont understand). You are thinking about loved ones in the future by your request. I doube FB would go for it. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22394223/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/dead-man-sends-cards-heaven/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22394223/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/d...

Angostura 9y ago

The answer seems simple. Add a clause to your will.

CryptoFascist 9y ago

Simple. Express in your will that you wish your social media account credentials to be posted to 4chan, or whatever the equivalent of the day is, with instructions to 'have at it, jerks'. That way, your online identity gets to be like Jim Morrison's grave.

matt4077 9y ago
Jimbo's grave usually has an empty bottle with a rose in it. Plus sometimes a threesome of cute hippies, if it's an abnormally warm night. I believe 4chan has neither the taste nor the means to make something like that happen.

specialist 9y ago

A dead coworker's Facebook profile was hijacked, started spamming. It was very distressing. Minimally: Subscribe to the SSA Death Registry (or local equivalent), integrate the data. Set a flag in (potentially) matching profile(s). Put account into some kind of "might be dead" probationary state, for further adjudication. Having worked on both medical and voter registration records, this is normal activity. Social media, email hosts, etc, should do the same.

DanBC 9y ago

> Depending on the circumstances of a person’s death, those online reminders can be overwhelming. A mother who loses her daughter to domestic violence may feel sick when she looks online and sees photos of her daughter’s wedding day > When people come to Facebook after suffering a loss, we want them to feel comfort, not pain, Lying cunts. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hollie-gazzard-facebook-refuses-to-remove-photograph-of-murder-victim-posing-with-killer-ex-a6711611.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hollie-gazzar... > The family of a young hairdresser murdered in a savage attack by her ex-boyfriend have repeatedly appealed to Facebook to remove photographs of the pair together. > Nine images of Hollie Gazzard, 20, who was stabbed 14 times by Asher Maslin in February last year, are still visible online. (They have, eventually, removed the images).

hyperman1 9y ago

A few years ago my brother died, unexpectedly, in his thirties, in a neighbour country. He travelled a lot and had friends all over the planet. We didn't know most of them. Their email adresses were probably in his gmail account, so we thought to get it assigned to us. Procedure is in this page: https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?hl=nl#ts=6357650 https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?h... . The problem: It asks for a court order in the united states. No idea why the courts are even involved in this case, it seems like a basic civic issue, but the US seems to do a lot by court. Or not, I don't actually know. So here we are, in grief, far from home, burial in a week, horrible mess to sort out, and google wants some legal papers from some court half the planet away, in a completely alien legal system where I even don't know what my basic rights are. Even if google has local presence in all of the countrys involved. No chance to fix that in a week. I hope like hell we found most of his important friends. Even so, if any googler happens to read this: Please fix that. I know you cant' give access to random strangers, but there's got to be a better way, involving at least the local legal system.

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sarahhh100 9y ago