4 ms·

Someone memorialized my Facebook profile but I'm still alive

75 points by phwd 14y ago

TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
Hm. Since Facebook doesn't seem to care much for users (indivdual), perhaps hitting a few high profile people would change their course on this? Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) ? I think that'd get the point across.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  If it's not completely automated, I expect that one wouldn't go through.
lda 14y ago
> IMPORTANT: Under penalty of perjury, this form is solely for the reporting of a deceased person to memorialise. Sarcasm aside, I would be curious to see someone tried over an Internet form in a court of law.
- tptacek 14y ago
  They can't be, at least not for "perjury", because "under penalty of perjury" has no force unless authorized by a court or, I guess, some specific statute. The idea that you can stick the words "under penalty of perjury" on a random form to create a legal requirement for truthful answers is one of those Internet legal old-wives-tales, like adding "no copyright intended" to a Youtube upload. However, if you report that someone else is dead, and they or their family suffer harm as a result, you can probably be sued easily, regardless of whether you use Facebook to make the report, or a carrier pigeon.
  - glimcat 14y ago
    "We will suspend your account and you may be liable for civil damages" wasn't severe enough?
  - Domenic_S 14y ago
    I don't get it. There are plenty of legally-enforceable forms online.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      The words "under penalty of perjury" have nothing to do with their enforceability.
    - jlarocco 14y ago
      "Perjury" is lying under oath while testifying in court. The use on the Facebook page is nonsensical.
      - Natsu 14y ago
        Not just while testifying in court. Statutes can also require declarations to be made under penalty of perjury. Valid DMCA notices, for example, must contain one.
jorgem 14y ago
I hope no one writes a robot that memorializes every single facebook user.
- Tichy 14y ago
  Zombie Apocalypse...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- praptak 14y ago
  ... or bored trollforum users start doing it for teh lulz.
51Cards 14y ago
Nice to see someone from FB apparently hopping on this right away and replying on SE. Having a more direct interface would be something for them to consider though as a lot of users aren't going to know how to raise an alert "where the techies wander".
- lbrandy 14y ago
  If you put the word 'memorialized' into the helpcenter you are greeted with 4 results, one of which is this exact issue, and leads to this form: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=292558237463098 https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=292558237463098, A task has already been opened, internally, to display this information on first login of memorialized accounts.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
swang 14y ago
Facebook's Help Center isn't very helpful at least for reporting actual bugs. First off it's tucked away into a dropup in the lower part of the right hand column. The site seems to actively discourage you from report bugs (which may be what Facebook wants in terms of reducing the volume of help tickets). I had a problem in Facebook's Mobile app (iPhone) where sometimes after uploading multiple pictures into a new album half the album wouldn't be displayed. To me it looked like some kind of memory/display refresh issue rather than Facebook not actually registering the images since if I could see the images if I looked at it through the photos album. But I could not find anywhere to register a bug/problem and I eventually just gave up. I'm not sure if its been fixed since I stopped bothering to look for a way to reproduce it since there's no place to submit a bug fix anyways. Subsequently I've found other small bugs on the site, for example a couple of days ago they made an update that moved the Facebook logo down 1px too much. Since they use a CSS sprite, some of the white from the Facebook logo below it was showing. How do I report that? Maybe they knew about it but it was about for 1.5-2 days (it's fixed now it seems). One more annoying problem: As a developer, I know that other developers will want a lot of information about how the bug occurred and how to reproduce it. So I waited until I got home so I could submit the bug through their website. But if you goto the main website, they want you to go back to your phone and report it through the Mobile Help Center. Maybe there is a place to submit it, but I've actually spent a decent amount of time looking for somewhere to send bug information to but I haven't found it. Sorry to hijack, but hopefully someone at Facebook will read this and can suggest a solution.
- Xuzz 14y ago
  In Facebook for iPhone, there is a way to report an issue: you can go to Help Center -> Something's Broken -> Report an Issue -> "please let us know", which then shows a page to file a report. It could be made even easier to find, but there is a way.
mkjones 14y ago
I just searched for "memorialized" on our help center and got a link to the page that lets you fix this: http://mkjon.es/memorialize.png http://mkjon.es/memorialize.png If I search for "facebook memorialized" on the google, the first result takes me to https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=185698814812082 https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=185698814812082, which has a link to the right page (though it's at the bottom)-:. I'm curious what path the OP took, and how we could improve ranking here (I work at facebook, but not on help center). I imagine the majority of people who search for this are looking to memorialize an account, not un-memorialize it, so I think in general the current ranking is correct, even if it failed in this case. [EDIT: as ldbrandy points out below, we're making it so this is the first thing you see when you log in as a memorialized account.]
- lotharbot 14y ago
  On a related note, a friend of mine has a lot of what she posts flagged as abuse, both on her personal page and on a religious ministry page she's involved with (the posts are not abusive in any way.) Even though she's pretty much locked down her own account, comments she posts to friends' pages often get flagged, sometimes resulting in month-long bans. It seems obvious somebody out there has a grudge and is abusing the flag system; I'm frankly surprised they haven't used the memorial system yet. A few of us have gone through this same search process, but haven't been able to find an official answer: is there some sort of appeals process? Is there some way to get a manual review, and perhaps some sort of block put in so that the same people can't keep flagging her? If there is such a process, how can facebook improve the discoverability? If there isn't such a process, is there a person or department we can contact to intervene directly?
- jessedhillon 14y ago
  Why not have a special "unmemorialize" button when the account is logged in? Either the person is really dead, in which case the user logging in is probably in charge of managing the remembrance and would not press the button, or the person is not dead and he/she is logging into their own account, which has been pranked. Why involve support here at all?
  - 14y ago
lucian303 14y ago
Wow, not to come off the wrong way, but this is the most hilarious thing I've read in a long time.
cldrope 14y ago
Ah, when stackexchange and hacker news become "halp google 4 me plz"
zerostar07 14y ago
Proof that you're alive?

75 points by phwd 14y ago

Hm. Since Facebook doesn't seem to care much for users (indivdual), perhaps hitting a few high profile people would change their course on this? Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) ? I think that'd get the point across.

dllthomas 14y ago
If it's not completely automated, I expect that one wouldn't go through.

lda 14y ago

> IMPORTANT: Under penalty of perjury, this form is solely for the reporting of a deceased person to memorialise. Sarcasm aside, I would be curious to see someone tried over an Internet form in a court of law.

tptacek 14y ago
They can't be, at least not for "perjury", because "under penalty of perjury" has no force unless authorized by a court or, I guess, some specific statute. The idea that you can stick the words "under penalty of perjury" on a random form to create a legal requirement for truthful answers is one of those Internet legal old-wives-tales, like adding "no copyright intended" to a Youtube upload. However, if you report that someone else is dead, and they or their family suffer harm as a result, you can probably be sued easily, regardless of whether you use Facebook to make the report, or a carrier pigeon.
- glimcat 14y ago
  "We will suspend your account and you may be liable for civil damages" wasn't severe enough?
- Domenic_S 14y ago
  I don't get it. There are plenty of legally-enforceable forms online.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    The words "under penalty of perjury" have nothing to do with their enforceability.
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    "Perjury" is lying under oath while testifying in court. The use on the Facebook page is nonsensical.
    - Natsu 14y ago
      Not just while testifying in court. Statutes can also require declarations to be made under penalty of perjury. Valid DMCA notices, for example, must contain one.

jorgem 14y ago

I hope no one writes a robot that memorializes every single facebook user.

Tichy 14y ago
Zombie Apocalypse...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
praptak 14y ago
... or bored trollforum users start doing it for teh lulz.

51Cards 14y ago

Nice to see someone from FB apparently hopping on this right away and replying on SE. Having a more direct interface would be something for them to consider though as a lot of users aren't going to know how to raise an alert "where the techies wander".

lbrandy 14y ago
If you put the word 'memorialized' into the helpcenter you are greeted with 4 results, one of which is this exact issue, and leads to this form: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=292558237463098 https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=292558237463098, A task has already been opened, internally, to display this information on first login of memorialized accounts.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

swang 14y ago

Facebook's Help Center isn't very helpful at least for reporting actual bugs. First off it's tucked away into a dropup in the lower part of the right hand column. The site seems to actively discourage you from report bugs (which may be what Facebook wants in terms of reducing the volume of help tickets). I had a problem in Facebook's Mobile app (iPhone) where sometimes after uploading multiple pictures into a new album half the album wouldn't be displayed. To me it looked like some kind of memory/display refresh issue rather than Facebook not actually registering the images since if I could see the images if I looked at it through the photos album. But I could not find anywhere to register a bug/problem and I eventually just gave up. I'm not sure if its been fixed since I stopped bothering to look for a way to reproduce it since there's no place to submit a bug fix anyways. Subsequently I've found other small bugs on the site, for example a couple of days ago they made an update that moved the Facebook logo down 1px too much. Since they use a CSS sprite, some of the white from the Facebook logo below it was showing. How do I report that? Maybe they knew about it but it was about for 1.5-2 days (it's fixed now it seems). One more annoying problem: As a developer, I know that other developers will want a lot of information about how the bug occurred and how to reproduce it. So I waited until I got home so I could submit the bug through their website. But if you goto the main website, they want you to go back to your phone and report it through the Mobile Help Center. Maybe there is a place to submit it, but I've actually spent a decent amount of time looking for somewhere to send bug information to but I haven't found it. Sorry to hijack, but hopefully someone at Facebook will read this and can suggest a solution.

Xuzz 14y ago
In Facebook for iPhone, there is a way to report an issue: you can go to Help Center -> Something's Broken -> Report an Issue -> "please let us know", which then shows a page to file a report. It could be made even easier to find, but there is a way.

mkjones 14y ago

I just searched for "memorialized" on our help center and got a link to the page that lets you fix this: http://mkjon.es/memorialize.png http://mkjon.es/memorialize.png If I search for "facebook memorialized" on the google, the first result takes me to https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=185698814812082 https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=185698814812082, which has a link to the right page (though it's at the bottom)-:. I'm curious what path the OP took, and how we could improve ranking here (I work at facebook, but not on help center). I imagine the majority of people who search for this are looking to memorialize an account, not un-memorialize it, so I think in general the current ranking is correct, even if it failed in this case. [EDIT: as ldbrandy points out below, we're making it so this is the first thing you see when you log in as a memorialized account.]

lotharbot 14y ago
On a related note, a friend of mine has a lot of what she posts flagged as abuse, both on her personal page and on a religious ministry page she's involved with (the posts are not abusive in any way.) Even though she's pretty much locked down her own account, comments she posts to friends' pages often get flagged, sometimes resulting in month-long bans. It seems obvious somebody out there has a grudge and is abusing the flag system; I'm frankly surprised they haven't used the memorial system yet. A few of us have gone through this same search process, but haven't been able to find an official answer: is there some sort of appeals process? Is there some way to get a manual review, and perhaps some sort of block put in so that the same people can't keep flagging her? If there is such a process, how can facebook improve the discoverability? If there isn't such a process, is there a person or department we can contact to intervene directly?
jessedhillon 14y ago
Why not have a special "unmemorialize" button when the account is logged in? Either the person is really dead, in which case the user logging in is probably in charge of managing the remembrance and would not press the button, or the person is not dead and he/she is logging into their own account, which has been pranked. Why involve support here at all?
- 14y ago

lucian303 14y ago

Wow, not to come off the wrong way, but this is the most hilarious thing I've read in a long time.

cldrope 14y ago

Ah, when stackexchange and hacker news become "halp google 4 me plz"

zerostar07 14y ago

Proof that you're alive?