Every time you visit the Facebook homepage you receive recommendations about potential individuals that you should friend but what happens when the person being recommended is dead? That’s exactly what has been happening to one of my family members for the past week and when I asked her about it, the response was understandable, “It’s a little bit creepy!” She then asked me what to do to remove it.
The way that Facebook’s system works is that when they learn that somebody has passed away, they switch the profile to memorial status. Facebook needs to be notified about the person and there isn’t exactly a link under a user’s profile photo that says “Mark this person as deceased”. Ultimately it’s up to the family of the deceased individual what happens to the profile but many decide to keep it up to let users comment on the wall. A New York Times article over the weekend described how one memorial page was used among the author’s friends:
After Luke died, his Facebook page became an online gathering place for his hundreds of Facebook friends. They exchanged updates on his Wall — including news about his wife’s condition — reminiscences, photographs and a poem by Rilke. There was a report on his cremation ceremony in Uganda. The post said Luke was sent off with Madagascar chocolate, root beer and a small “environmental justice” note tucked in his pocket.
Fortunately Luke’s family had figured out how to contact Facebook. If you aren’t aware of the process, all you need to do is visit the deceased users form which will let you enter the person’s information. Facebook will then go through the process of memorializing the account. The concept of creating a virtual memorial for deceased individuals is still something that’s foreign to most individuals.
In one way it’s kind of a cool opportunity to connect with others that were affected by the individual’s life. On the other hand, there’s kind of a creepy feeling to be getting status updates from someone who has passed away. Do you think profiles should be removed or memorialized after one passes?
Add value to someone's life, become memorable and live forever.
Facebook pages/profiles are a good way to document all the good things about someone after they've changed worlds and keep their memory alive.
Waykewl.
Thanks for the post,
~Ronald
TrueBeliever & HopeDealer
Comment by Ronald Earl Wilsher — July 27, 2009 @ 5:19 am
Memorialize it!
Comment by Facebook User — July 27, 2009 @ 5:28 am
I think this is a very good initiative:
I just hope the Fbook administrators have included some kind of provision for verification of such "declarations of death"… Otherwise hundreds of millions of current users are now vulnerable to "virtual murder" by unscrupulous users who would falsely signal their death as a sick joke.
Comment by Alec Cooper — July 27, 2009 @ 6:06 am
True Alec, as the form is it open for abuse by the sick and twisted (and those who had a domestic/ disagreement with)
Even the DOB can be forged (friends often know when someone were born and also the fact that email addresses and personal contact info of the deceased often is knowledge of majority of friends)
Facebook needs to provide a box on the form for contact information (maybe the local coroner or official list of registration offices (for BMD [Birth Marriages and Deaths)) or with proper data protection laws upload of a death certificate
Comment by Jamie Ellis — July 27, 2009 @ 6:58 am
Dare say it what is the procedure if a person goes missing or apart of a event and presumed dead (with no body to confirm death)
also what if the person is presumed dead then reappears years later)
Comment by Jamie Ellis — July 27, 2009 @ 7:07 am
I've always thought a better way to do this is to allow users to designate an e-beneficiary so to speak.
In a world where people are mobile and don't necessarily keep up with each other on a regular basis, our electronic services are more likely to know something is amiss than friends. (This is especially applicable for single people.)
If I went missing, there's a good chance that Facebook would have a clue before my friends did.
I could designate a person to contact if I hadn't logged into FB in a certain period of time. If it turns out I'd died, that person would have authority to administer my account.
Comment by Facebook User — July 27, 2009 @ 9:55 am
I agree on the last post. Also Facebook could play a significant part in getting the word out about missing people and children. Facebook I feel has a tremendous social responsibility to utilize it's widespread for good.
Comment by Eleonora Barna — July 27, 2009 @ 11:50 am
Would it be out of line (in regard to the comment about what if someone is presumed missing, etc.) to have Facebook automatically suspend accounts that are dormant after a certain period of time? I mean ones that AREN'T flagged as memorial sites. I think you can even lose your Yahoo email if it has zero activity, even no logging in activity, for more than three months.
Comment by Ally — July 27, 2009 @ 12:36 pm
I think, if Facebook does do that, they should at least attempt to contact you first.
Facebook Newbies, however, often go months before they get addicted and start logging in regularly (in my case it was 11 months between visits) so it would have to be a really large amount of time.
Comment by PamelaJaye — July 28, 2009 @ 2:02 pm
My brother passed away a little over a year ago, and I agonized over what to do about his facebook account. He hadn't been on facebook long, and only had a few facebook friends, but even so, it was disconcerting for our mother, his daughter and myself to see him in our friends lists etc. I'd read an article somewhere that said it was next to impossible to get facebook to remove someone's profile without extreme measures (sending them the deceased's death certificate among them), so I was worried we'd have to leave him there forever.
Luckily, I managed to get into his account by guessing at his password, and deactivated it. It wasn't emotionally easy. Every time I removed him from another one of my contact lists, social networks, cellphone etc., it was as if he became a little more dead each time, like I was erasing him from my life. Disturbing, and probably not something anyone foresaw when they conceived of the internet. All these "ghosts" hanging around after their owners are dead. Brrr.
Comment by Patti — August 4, 2009 @ 4:40 am