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I sometimes worry that, after doing everything I can while living to avoid using Facebook and/or supporting their business model in any way, someone might throw

by 659087 9y ago

I sometimes worry that, after doing everything I can while living to avoid using Facebook and/or supporting their business model in any way, someone might throw that all away on my behalf if something were to happen to me. I'd see an announcement of my death on Facebook as an insult, as my death would essentially be creating engagement/ad impressions/clicks for Facebook.

pishpash 9y ago
Then don't have someone tell Facebook you died. Nobody would know if you don't think they shouldn't know.
- 659087 9y ago
  It would be kind of hard to prevent people from posting something about my death on Facebook, unless I figured out a some way to temporarily re-animate myself. I know a lot of people. Many of those people unfortunately use Facebook. There's a good chance that at least one of them will be posting something about it, regardless of my wishes.
freeflight 9y ago
> I'd see an announcement of my death on Facebook as an insult, as my death would essentially be creating engagement/ad impressions/clicks for Facebook. That's an odd way of seeing it considering that paid obituaries, in Newspapers, have been a thing for quite a while. The family pays the newspaper for the obituary, the newspaper sells advertisement space and then even asks people to pay for that whole package. Compared to that, the Facebook version at least feels only like half a rip-off because your family wouldn't have to pay for it being posted and others wouldn't have to pay to read it.
- wiz21c 9y ago
  Hmmm... I like your point but disagree a bit. The obituary thing, is something from the past, from a time where advertisement was not that pervasive. Also, it's not much used anymore (at least in my country). So I'd say the obituary in newspaper is not quite comparable to FB. FB is based on advertisement and on social information commercial exploitation. So I'd consider an obituary on FB to be more of a problem than on newspaper. But, I suppose that if I die today, someone will post something on facebook (statistically, at least one of the person I know should use it for that; although I totally condemn FB (FB, not the social network thing))
  - freeflight 9y ago
    > Also, it's not much used anymore (at least in my country). In Germany, at least, they are still very popular. Working at an ambulant palliative service, one of my colleagues checks the local newspapers each morning, over the years it's happened quite a few times that we found out about one of our patients passing away from the obituary in the newspaper before we got a notice from the family or the acting physician. > FB is based on advertisement and on social information commercial exploitation. So are pretty much the majority of newspapers at this point, just because Facebook is better at the social information exploitation angle doesn't turn them into an entirely different beast, as I'm pretty sure newspapers are equally busy trying to categorize their customers for better ad impressions, their databases just ain't remotely as big and detailed as those of Facebook. From a practical perspective, I'd still prefer a free obituary to a paid one anytime. Sure, it might not be completely free, as you are paying with personal information, it's at least more free than "Pay for the obituary, pay for the newspaper and then still look at advertisements". The best solution would probably something like Facebook that doesn't finance itself through the commercialization of its user's data. I wonder how viable an approach like the original WhatsApp one (subscription services with very small fees) would work for a social media platform at the scale of Facebook?

by 659087 9y ago

pishpash 9y ago

Then don't have someone tell Facebook you died. Nobody would know if you don't think they shouldn't know.

659087 9y ago
It would be kind of hard to prevent people from posting something about my death on Facebook, unless I figured out a some way to temporarily re-animate myself. I know a lot of people. Many of those people unfortunately use Facebook. There's a good chance that at least one of them will be posting something about it, regardless of my wishes.

freeflight 9y ago

> I'd see an announcement of my death on Facebook as an insult, as my death would essentially be creating engagement/ad impressions/clicks for Facebook. That's an odd way of seeing it considering that paid obituaries, in Newspapers, have been a thing for quite a while. The family pays the newspaper for the obituary, the newspaper sells advertisement space and then even asks people to pay for that whole package. Compared to that, the Facebook version at least feels only like half a rip-off because your family wouldn't have to pay for it being posted and others wouldn't have to pay to read it.

wiz21c 9y ago
Hmmm... I like your point but disagree a bit. The obituary thing, is something from the past, from a time where advertisement was not that pervasive. Also, it's not much used anymore (at least in my country). So I'd say the obituary in newspaper is not quite comparable to FB. FB is based on advertisement and on social information commercial exploitation. So I'd consider an obituary on FB to be more of a problem than on newspaper. But, I suppose that if I die today, someone will post something on facebook (statistically, at least one of the person I know should use it for that; although I totally condemn FB (FB, not the social network thing))
- freeflight 9y ago
  > Also, it's not much used anymore (at least in my country). In Germany, at least, they are still very popular. Working at an ambulant palliative service, one of my colleagues checks the local newspapers each morning, over the years it's happened quite a few times that we found out about one of our patients passing away from the obituary in the newspaper before we got a notice from the family or the acting physician. > FB is based on advertisement and on social information commercial exploitation. So are pretty much the majority of newspapers at this point, just because Facebook is better at the social information exploitation angle doesn't turn them into an entirely different beast, as I'm pretty sure newspapers are equally busy trying to categorize their customers for better ad impressions, their databases just ain't remotely as big and detailed as those of Facebook. From a practical perspective, I'd still prefer a free obituary to a paid one anytime. Sure, it might not be completely free, as you are paying with personal information, it's at least more free than "Pay for the obituary, pay for the newspaper and then still look at advertisements". The best solution would probably something like Facebook that doesn't finance itself through the commercialization of its user's data. I wonder how viable an approach like the original WhatsApp one (subscription services with very small fees) would work for a social media platform at the scale of Facebook?