Facebook is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard

bbc.com

102 pointsdan123453 comments

I tried, and failed, to 'memorialize' my fathers Facebook page. It became more and more full of crap from unhinged friends and distant relatives posting things they think he would have liked. I left Facebook over a year ago, and this is one of the things that drove me away. I could no longer stand seeing posts of shit videos with the tag line "Donny would have loved this!", just so the poster could score some likes from the clan.

That's truly awful, but can't people still post to 'memorialized' pages anyway? I have a dear friend who passed several years ago, and I believe her page was memorialized... but people still post "Miss you" messages every year on her birthday.

That, along with "Donny would have liked this" posts both seem rather nice to me. It's seems a little cynical to assume they're doing it for likes from other family members. I think it's a nice and natural way to reminisce with your family about those who have passed on. I think it'd be heart warming if people posted about me on my FB years after I passed away.

It is cynical, but it's also some well-founded cynicism, given that people do such wild things for the Likes.

Yep, always a nice surprise when you're using your phone, decide to check Facebook and get a "your year in Facebook" featuring your now-dead best friend, and an ex-girlfriend. Thanks for that, Facebook.

"Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty", welcome to the future.

Randall Munroe of xkcd had a (humorous) look at when the number of dead people on Facebook surpasses the number of living people a few years ago: https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/

http://jacquesmattheij.com/deadbook-the-long-term-facebook

I think the last quote of the article is telling:

"The truth," writes Borges, "is that we all live by leaving behind."

Honestly, why can't we all heed this advice and just leave Facebook behind?

The second we all stop looking at it the second it stops being so important. I hardly ever check FB anymore.

I don't understand how this is relevant - it's a technology people use to stay connected, share photos, and communicate. Is there some issue you have with this? The article wasn't commenting on the moral implications of facebook or even the beat-to-death privacy issues.

Please explain how it is irrelevant. If you cease paying attention to FB, then your deceased loved ones no longer continue this "digital life" as the article puts it.

In the future, people will only be dead for a short moment, then a Facebook AI will take over and keep on posting and replying, generating new photos and liking your posts.

Or even without Facebook. From the linked BBC story:

Consider a robot that was commissioned by the entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt, called Bina 48. The robot is almost identical in appearance to Rothblatt’s wife, and contains a database of her speech and memories.

Rothblatt, author of Virtually Human and the CEO of United Therapeutics, is a transhumanist whose motto is "death is optional". Rothblatt foresees a near-future world in which the dead can be reanimated thanks to mind clone software that can allow avatars to think and respond and be in an eerily similar way to those they’re cloning.

Real life Black Mirror

A few years ago I saw appearing in my facebook feed a link shown as shared by my deceased father, a month after he passed away.

I still wonder if his account had been compromised or if facebook was disguising sponsored links as shared by one of your contacts. Either way not very tasteful.

It was probably an app that had posting permissions on the account.

I think if you notify Facebook that the person has died (and provide some sort of proof) they switch the account over to "memorial" status (which can't post, etc.)

I needed zero proof to memorialise the profile of a deceased friend. Didn't even have the exact date of his death, let alone any documentation. It had been over a year, so I guess Facebook took a look at the profile activity and wall posts and decided it was a legit request.

This has been an issue for a while:

http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-liking-s...

One of my coworkers passed away after being quite sick for a while. Facebook had been his primary social outlet, keeping everyone updated, coordinating stuff, medium for support and encouragement.

His Facebook account got stolen and then used it for spam. It was pretty hard on his family, close friends.

Seems like Facebook should support use cases for someone to claim an account (like hospitals special case power of attorney, next of kin, etc).

It's been over 6 years now since my father passed away and still, every year, Facebook sends me a notification that it's his birthday. How many years without someone logging in before Facebook stops considering them a "user"?

I did try to memorialize the page, they wanted me to fax his ID and death certificate, not going to happen, so the page will sit out there forever or until they have a change in policy I suppose.

To be fair, long absences from Facebook are likely not uncommon. Personally, I signed up when I was in University and it was restricted as such, stopped using it pretty much immediately, and only very recently after moving abroad did I start using it again to keep in touch with friends and colleagues, meaning a gap of almost 10 years.

During that time, Facebook wasn't shy about reminding me that I wasn't using it, and frequently sent emails suggesting content on Facebook I might want to see. An auto-hibernate or shut down for accounts seems unlikely as it's contrary to their attempts at retention.

I think death is just something that Facebook hasn't really taken the time to establish a good public protocol for; per your post, the behind the scenes protocol of "fax us an ID and death certificate" is probably outside the comfort zone of a lot of people. Maybe it would work for people to establish a series of emergency contacts and grant the contacts a page where a certain number (at least more than one) are needed to confirm the passing of a person, at which point the page moves into the memorialized mode. The process should also have safeguards to be reversible, just in case of pranks, and allow alternative proof methods just in case the contacts are unreachable/unwilling to confirm.

I wonder how many dead people are still showing up as active users on dating sites like match.com/etc and are still getting messages from people.

Ya, that unsolicited yearly reminder is cruel.

In the USA at least, death records are public information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Death_Index

It'd be such an easy lift for Facebook to aggregate, correlate this information (just like ChoicePoint, Seisent, many others).

This is the primary reason why I deleted my Facebook account. I couldn't stand the thought of being run over some day and having no way of stopping the creation of a virtual memorial owned by Facebook's stakeholders. I'd be turning in my grave.

At some point, people will indeed continue "living" online. It will be a gradual process, I suspect. People will increasingly rely on AI to handle routine stuff. To fake paying attention. And gradually, those AIs will become indistinguishable from their owners.

The Black Mirror episode called "Be Right Back" deals with this in an unnerving sci-fi context

Thanks. Missed that series. I haven't watched much video in recent years. I've been reading a lot more. Mostly SF. But I do recall liking how Caprica handled this.

AI augmentation could get very strange. Imagine an AlphaGo like approach to becoming better at your profession. Maybe as a politician, even. You just read from the prompter. I'm reminded of Primer, where characters were repeating dialog from recordings.

Worth watching that one episode - but be warned, it messed with my head for a while afterwards.

I've been thinking of this for a while: if you share quite a lot of things about your life, then, a good enough AI a few decades from now can learn - well, you.

'What would you ask from grandma if she were still alive?' becomes 'ask your grandma now'

That's the premise for a great Black Mirror episode: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Right_Back_(Black_Mirror)

This is explored in one of the episodes of the anthology Black Mirror. It's pretty interesting. I don't remember exactly which episode but you should check it out.

Yeah Facebook honestly does suck, it basically becoming MySpace.

Archaeologists will uncover the ancient memory talismans known as "hardisks" in the odd burial vaults the ancestors called "serv-are-ooms".

The Facebook of the Dead.

surely Facebook could simply hive off accounts not logged into after say one year.

They should get facebook.rip.

one of my friends died in a climbing accident in 2011 in Austria. LinkedIn still asks me to endorse him for his skills.

and = an ?

Should the bbc title not be "Facebook is a growing an unstoppable digital graveyard" ?

Not being pedantic but not sure if that typo is intentional.

No, not sure where you got your wires crossed but you can have either;

Facebook is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard

Facebook is growing an unstoppable digital graveyard

but not

Facebook is a growing an unstoppable digital graveyard

Ah yes. missed the 'a' :)

Though option 2 in your list would have been a concise and good enough title.

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