Facebook suggests I "reconnect" with a dead friend | Hacker News Reader

Facebook suggests I "reconnect" with a dead friend

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19 pointsbrilliant23 comments

You know, software developers know EXACTLY why facebook is recommending dead friends. Yes, almost all of us KNOW that the algorithm has absolutely no way of knowing that dude is dead. We also understand exactly why the trigger "he is not posting much" works.

But for whatever reason, when someone mentions something like this, we pretend we don't know the algorithms behind it. Dudes, you know it's no facebook conspiracy - they are just using some standard algorithms you understand pretty well, so let's not pretend like it's some special thing.

If their algorithms somehow parsed the RIP on his wall and stopped suggesting him, then THAT would be special.

Yes, we know how it works. Someone was looking at what happens in the common case and didn't think of this edge case. It's a reminder that social situations are complex and though we try, it's impossible to think of every edge case.

That's why you need a way for people to report bugs to you, a way to quickly disable features that aren't working, and a process to fix them.

>It's a reminder that social situations are complex and though we try, it's impossible to think of every edge case.

If they implement a tag to show someone has died what are they going to do about the zombie apocalypse/second coming?

Edge cases.

Well, they get involved if you try to call yourself "Naked Jen" -- why can't they get involved if someone is dead. If there's a story in a reputable newspaper that says the guy is dead, what's the problem? At least stop poking people about reconnecting with teh dead guy. What's so freakishly hard about that??

Imagine if there was a method of notifying facebook that members are dead. Now imagine the sheer insanity that would result from random people 'deadifying' their friends as a practical joke. Even if it was 'verified' by humans at some point, there would still be error and it would be a nightmare.

Getting told to 'reconnect' with a dead friend can be mildly traumatic. Finding out that your friend is dead when they're really not doesn't sound like a better scenario.

Funnily enough, there is such a way - at least, sort of. http://www.ehow.com/how_5177993_memorialize-deceased-faceboo...

I wonder if this is possible to exploit. Photoshop an obituary perhaps? I suppose it depends on how thorough they are with their verification, but I can't see it being too difficult to deadify someone.

That's exactly what you can do - I had to last year for a friend,

see:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/help/contact.php?show_form=deceas...

Does it notify their friends? eg "XXXXX has regrettably died" :/

Not that I was aware of, it just closes most of their information off, but leaves photos and their wall up so people can leave condolence messages.

> Getting told to 'reconnect' with a dead friend can be mildly traumatic.

Not if it directs them to a virtual ouija board.

'reconnecting' with a dead friend can also be mildly therapeutic.

You can't really blame facebook for sending messages like these when they have no idea what's happened to him.

The simple solution is to let them know: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=842#!/help/contact.php?sh...

But you can blame them for sending out "reconnect" messages in the first place.

Yeah, it's horrible verbiage, plus it's really rather self-serving on Facebook's part.

Really this is "we noticed this user has stopped using Facebook, please trigger an action so we can spam their email to remind them that we exist." It's not about helping the user, they don't send these types of things for users who are active on Facebook otherwise, but not directly interacting with you.

"Reconnect" to a dead friend is pretty worst case, but it's also insulting to be told to "reconnect with Bob" when you go drinking with Bob every week. Facebook has incredible hubris to think that if two people aren't interacting on Facebook, it means they aren't interacting at all.

How would people feel about the option to have your state ID number associated with your account (but kept private) so that Facebook could update with a file from the government of recently notified deaths?

Facebook could send a condolences message to the associated email to catch false positives (people that the gov think died but really didn't!) and then a week later or so put the account into "deceased" mode.

Thoughts?

I had a glorious day last year where linked in recommended a friend who had committed suicide a few days earlier AND the person who many years earlier had shot and killed a couple of my friends. I wonder what the odds on not 1 but 2 at the same time are...

It really is a growing problem for companies like facebook. We've estimated that over 285k US facebook users will pass away this year and closer to 1.25m worldwide.

Here's another good link about how to delete and memorialize facebook accounts: http://blog.entrustet.com/2010/03/29/how-to-permanently-dele....

I don't think its something that Facebook can fix with code. The social security administration has a good database of US deaths, but they only update the feed 4x per year and Facebook would have to correlate it using info they currently don't ask for. A few companies are developing good death data, but I think it's really far off.

Other countries like Sweden have national registries that update daily, so Facebook could try to implement a code based solution, but I don't think it's likely to happen.

In reality, a survivor needs to notify facebook. You currently can, but you can only memorialize your account, not delete it. To do that, you'd need to give someone access to your account.

I'm the cofounder of Entrustet, one of the companies that helps people store their last wishes for all of their online accounts. It's important to make your wishes known so that your survivors know what to do.

Facebook is really the tip of the iceberg. Think about your blog, servers, family pictures and all of your other valuable digital assets. If you'd like more info, check us out.

Nathan Lustig cofounder, http://www.Entrustet.com

Death is an awkward subject for facebook. I don't think they know how they should be handling it.

This is why I think 1000memories has so much potential.

Quite the dilemma. When this happened to me, a former coworker who succumbed to cancer. I thought about unfriending him just to make the suggestion go away but that gesture is just too cold. I'd rather FB provide a mechanism to mute their "reconnect" suggestions.

That happens to me as well with my cousin. Apart from the deceased facebook page that they already have, they could avoid sending messages if they see that a user hasn't logged in in the past 2 months for example. Either that person is no longer with us or he or she has decided to give up facebook. Either way it's annoying for everyone involved.

Think they're trying to tell me something? :-)

Facebook has had a mechanism in place to deal with deceased members for a while now. http://www.ehow.com/how_5177993_memorialize-deceased-faceboo... .

I somewhat hate to link to eHow but all of the other links were insensitive and given that there's a specific instance here I thought it'd be better to use something that doesn't unabashedly address the deceased.

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