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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

by 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 wiz21c 9y ago

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?