
Facebook ordered to explain deleted profile - mikece
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44537048
======
rmason
While it's not exactly the same thing but Facebook needs to tighten up their
rules. I got in a squabble with someone who wanted my FB identity.

Even though I didn't follow him he filled out a form online and had me
declared deceased. It took me close to a week, with the intervention of a
friend who worked at Facebook, to get my account back.

How can someone who you don't even follow back be allowed to do something like
this to someone? I had to prove that I was alive, complete with photos of me
with my drivers license.

But why is a complete stranger without any proof whatsoever able to have me
declared dead? Facebook needs to rethink these rules. Seems to me in this case
the guys widow should be the one who has final say over his account.

~~~
acchow
You can also go to usps.com and declare someone has moved and have all their
mail sent to somewhere else (probably don't pick your own address if you don't
want to get caught).

~~~
pmyteh
I don't know about the USPS's implementation, but the UK's Royal Mail not only
collects ID for this service, but sends an unredirectable letter to your old
address saying 'we're starting a redirect, contact us if this is odd'. So it
is possible to do sanely. Like Facebook, I suppose - require a scanned death
certificate?

~~~
Nition
Last time I did this, the "we're starting a redirect, contact us if this is
odd" letter was sent after the redirect started, and it was helpfully
redirected to the new address!

~~~
chrismeller
The USPS sends two - one to your old address and one to your new address. The
one sent to your old address does indicate that they’re redirecting - that is,
it is sent after the fact, it is not asking for confirmation or providing a
grace period before they do - but it is marked clearly as something that
should not be forwarded.

I suppose it could have been forwarded by accident (at scale screw ups do
happen), but perhaps you confused one with the other?

------
lifeisstillgood
I think there is a sea chnage coming in how we (society) deal with problems
that require subtly and judgement.

Let's give FB the benefit of the doubt here, there were legitimate conflicting
requests over this profile, with some degree of documentation.

A human would have been needed to look at the case and make a decision. Let's
say that human would take 6 minutes - and is a well trained professional. Full
time that's about 10,000 6 minute cases per year. A room of lawyers like this
is maybe 1/4 Million cases per year flat out.

Facebook probably generates 1/4M edge cases a day.

Automated cars will be making billions of decisions a year that affect human
lives more deeply.

We will have to change our rules in society - from post-hoc review as in court
today to _mainly_ decide the rules upfront - from the trolley problem in
automated cars to what are the rules around deleting digital assets.

We are heading for an open / closed society

------
sievebrain
GDPR request over some embarrassing information, perhaps? Facebook probably
can't win here. Presumably they have a policy that compels deletion in some
cases and they don't want to argue about individual cases

~~~
bencollier49
I don't think dead people can make GDPR erasure requests. No idea about the
legalities involved if an executor or heir tries it.

My bet would be on a fake profile report.

------
Maarten88
It's not only Facebook who have this process unsufficiently secured. The
process for administering real death is also not really tamperproof. There is
a hilarious defcon presentation on virtually killing someone and getting a
real death certificate:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs)

Improperly reporting someone dead, or misrepresenting someone's will is
something "you don't do" so the system is designed to minimize friction/pain.

------
testplzignore
Two ideas to improve this:

Transparency. If Foo dies and Bar reports them as dead, then inform all of
Foo's friends about what Bar did. Foo's friends have a right to know that Foo
has died and that Bar wants Foo's data deleted. In the real world, this is
basic human decency.

Appeal process. If X number/percent of Foo's friends say that he isn't really
dead or that his profile shouldn't have been deleted, then ask all of Foo's
friends what to do. Simple vote, majority wins. If someone is still unhappy
with the result of this, then they can take it to the real world court system.

~~~
notahacker
I would not want to first hear of my friend's death via an automated Facebook
notification, still less in the form of an invitation to vote on whether to
honour a family member's request to remove the profile.

------
reaperducer
Maybe this is how we find out if Facebook really deletes user data, or if it
just hides it.

------
lifeisstillgood
The change.org petition had 850 signatures over the year or so before the
article was written - it is up to 1150 now.

Side note - change.org has an interesting UX there - roughly they replay the
last ten minutes of sign ups as you visit the site (so I went twice and saw
the same people "sign up"). It gave me a real sense of momentum the first time
I went ... had to readjust as I realised.

------
ozim
I kind of feel sad for person that feels like loosing someone for second time.
Where "kind of" means what kind of universe person is living in where FB posts
or messages mean something. I am too cynical or and too technical. Maybe
totally different person who thinks while loosing someone "it is sad, but
after couple weeks I accept it".

So am I bad person?

Or is it just clickbait article trying to get attention on Facebook bad
publicity?

Full disclosure, I just removed my FB account after GDPR went into effect,
still have to see people crying over it.

~~~
ams6110
I agree. After a reasonable period of mourning, the mentally healthy thing to
do is move on. It's not good to ruminate over old letters, Facebook posts,
photographs, or whatever of a dead person. OK to a keep a few things as fond
mementos, but keeping and revisiting every scrap of history is unhealthy.

------
karmakaze
While reading the article, I was struck by not only the impact that Facebooks
actions had, but also on how the presence of the online content changes how
someone is remembered and grieved. I could see in some cases how it might
range from unproductive to unhealthy--like a digital equivalent of keeping a
shrine and living in denial. I don't believe that's true in this case as 6
months is no time to get to grips with such loss.

------
chris_wot
The more I see this sort of thing, the more I'm heartened that individuals are
fighting back against Facebook.

~~~
crysin
I don't necessarily thing Facebook was in the wrong here. Sure maybe somebody
made that request to delete the profile against the family wishes but Facebook
doxing someone also isn't very acceptable.

~~~
ItsMe000001
You missed the story. It was _not_ about whether Facebook was allowed to
delete the profile - it was about giving information to family members of the
guy who died.

What causes outrage from companies such as Google or (here) FB is not what hey
do - but that it is impossible for normal people to get _any_ information
about anything! Your Youtube video was deleted - why? No response. My dead
partners data disappeared - why? No response. No response to anything. This IS
outrageous! Not responding to reasonable requests - and that has nothing to do
with "legal" \- is one of the worst ways of humans to interact with one
another. Try it at home. Their behavior of ignoring you - and again, this has
_nothing_ whatsoever to do with what is "legal" \- is what gets to people.
Psychologically that's just really, really bad, the worst way to treat
someone. Which raises the issue to another level: How arrogant as well as
stupid are this mega-companies that they think they can do that, that there
will be no long-term repercussions? This can't go on forever, people don't
accept that, so wouldn't it make business sense to treat your "data-providers"
(if not customers) just a bit better? How mighty do they already think they
are that they don't have to answer very reasonable questions of people
impacted by things they do? Nobody says they can't do it, we just want to
TALK! Give me a human, not a bot response!

What makes it especially bad is that the requests are _tiny_! They could be
handled easily (yes yes - needs actual humans, i.e. "expensive", oh the horror
for those mega-companies who don't know what to do with all their money - but
it's easy).

~~~
734786710934
Favebook’s policy for not giving information to family members came out of
situations where the decreased was not on good terms with their family. When
to give out information and to whom are not obvious or easy decisions when you
have a billion users.

~~~
ItsMe000001
As I already wrote: _Nobody_ (reasonable) asks them to do anything other than
TALK. If that is the issue, then say so! Of course, they would also have to
provide a way out if the issue can be shown to be invalid.

~~~
tqi
From the article: Ms Sabados said she spent a year talking to Facebook before
pursuing legal action.

------
throwbacktictac
If they figure out who did it then let me know. I'd pay to get my old profile
deleted.

------
XalvinX
To Facebook, we are all just so much data. They just don't care. Who doesn't
have a personal story or two about Facebook's indifference by now?
Just...Delete Facebook. It is time.

~~~
smacktoward
It doesn't matter if you delete Facebook, they will just maintain a "shadow
profile" on you anyway. (See [https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-
profiles-a-pr...](https://spideroak.com/articles/facebook-shadow-profiles-a-
profile-of-you-that-you-never-created/),
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-
profiles-h...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-profiles-
hearing-lujan-zuckerberg/),
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-
shadow-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-
profiles-zuckerberg-congress-data-privacy))

We flatter ourselves that just deleting the app will be enough to stop
Facebook from tracking us. Their appetite for our data is much too voracious
for that.

~~~
andrepd
Doesn't GDPR require them to really delete?

~~~
d4l3k
If you look at the answers Facebook provided to the US Senate they say:

"When the person visiting a website featuring Facebook’s tools is not a
registered Facebook user, Facebook does not have information identifying that
individual, and it does not create profiles for this individual.

...

We do not create profiles for non-Facebook users, nor do we use browser and
app logs for non-Facebook users to show targeted ads from our advertisers to
them or otherwise seek to personalize the content they see. However, we may
take the opportunity to show a general ad that is unrelated to the attributes
of the person or an ad encouraging the non-user to sign up for Facebook."

[https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/facebook-social-
me...](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/facebook-social-media-
privacy-and-the-use-and-abuse-of-data)

It's conceivable that Facebook could deanonymize users/aggregate the data they
get from like buttons etc, but they claim that they don't use that data for ad
targeting and it's only used for security.

~~~
abraae
Not a lawyer but I'd dig into this:

> We do not create profiles for non-Facebook users

What is a "profile"? Is a shadow profile a profile? Not "creating a profile"
may be very different from not tracking someone.

~~~
XalvinX
Even some of the ancient congressmen who know nothing about technology already
have figured out that Zuckerburg lied to them extensively. I hope that our
representatives will start to do their jobs. It has to be a crime to lie to
Congress, no?

------
MikeGale
This is what happens when you don't have many staff and your algorithms aren't
nearly as good as a decent person. Facebook has no way out of this, as
currently set up.

Would you believe it: If you want to have others vouch for you after losing
credentials, you can't pick a single person, you're forced to pick 5. If you
don't want to pick 5 you can't use the facility. What kind of mind comes up
with a system like that?

The thing that may be bothering them is that this will reveal that they don't
actually delete an account.

If they got out of the way as gatekeepers, let you use your own data, and that
which you're permitted to see, on your own terms it would be better.

If they remain as gatekeepers they will suffer pain, potentially lethal pain.

------
RankingMember
I'm guessing they're checking some sort of database for recently-deceased
automatically. I don't see why it'd trigger an automatic deletion rather than
setting the account to some sort of inactive status, though.

Edit: I'm wrong, it has to be specifically requested. I wonder how they
determine whether the requester is privileged.

~~~
mrbill
Nope. You have to specifically request that an account be "memorialized",
otherwise it stays there just like they've not logged in. I had to do it with
my wife's when she passed away.

~~~
mrbill
And "memorialization" just makes it so that the account can't post, log in,
etc - but other people can still post _to_ that account's "wall" \- "we miss
you" messages, etc.

