
Are the dead taking over Facebook? - lichtenberger
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053951719842540
======
incanus77
My wife passed away early (36) three years ago today.

For a few months, I used her Facebook account to keep in touch with friends
and family worldwide about the service, memorials, and the like. At the time,
I had quit Facebook myself 3-4 years prior. This was very handy for all of
this news dissemination, but then I used Facebook's "memorialize a person"
feature to shut down the account for good. This changes the user's name to
"Remembering ____ ____", disallows future login or comments on their posts,
but leaves all the other content up. I also pulled an archive of everything
(especially photos) before doing this.

It's honestly something I very rarely think about, probably mostly because
I've disavowed Facebook for years now. But I appreciate that Facebook provided
this concrete functionality. I still see her name pop up on other social
networks on a regular basis (e.g. you and ____ both know ____).

~~~
dpcx
I did this with my wife's account after she passed just over a year ago.
Unfortunately, I didn't think to have Facebook make an archive before I did.
They won't let you do so without a court order once the account is
memorialized, which means all her photos (from over 9 years of account
activity) are stuck there.

Hugs to you.

~~~
Zenst
It is reassuring that Facebook have some procedures, but these are ones of
their own making and nothing to stop that changing (though I doubt that).

But it does appear that there should be some sort of law/regulation to set the
standard for all social media platforms. Whilst physical graves have some
legal protection in place about what and what can not be done. Such digital
gravestones have no such protection. Maybe that needs a changing. Digital
Cemeteries are after all just as important than physical ones and social media
platforms come and go (G+).

~~~
henvic
Why regulation? It's working quite well so far. Let the market work things
out.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Yes, because there's such a healthy, thriving, competitive market in social
networking...?

~~~
henvic
And the answer to that is regulating? Of course not. Regulations like these
only work out for the powerful.

~~~
Dylan16807
> Regulations like these only work out for the powerful.

"like these"... if you said that in almost any other context I wouldn't bat an
eye. When it's about access controls to the accounts of dead people, I am
utterly baffled at how that will benefit the powerful.

~~~
jetzzz
It is harder for small teams (or even single persons) running small forums to
comply with different regulations than it is for a big company. There was a
story recently about a guy who was running some specialized forum but decided
to shut it down after he started receiving GDPR requests.

~~~
inflatableDodo
Do you actually think it would be an unreasonable burden on a small business
to have to remove a dead person from a marketing database when requested to by
their family?

~~~
drusepth
It becomes an unreasonable burden when you have dozens or hundreds of small
burdens/regulations that aren't unreasonable on their own, but collectively
steal a significant amount of time from small businesses trying to balance
developing something new and growing with complying with every little
regulation they may or may not even know about.

~~~
inflatableDodo
Having to remove a dead person from a marketing database when requested to by
their family is never an unreasonable burden, it is somewhat shameful that
there is even a need to remind people of that. Following regulations requiring
this should not require any extra effort because it is something you should
already be doing.

~~~
drusepth
While I agree with you, the argument is that adding regulations over hundreds
of "little things you should already be doing" is the kind of regulation that
hurts small businesses / sole developers that want to focus on developing and
growing new products.

------
Benjamin_Dobell
My father passed away a couple of years ago. It was the kind of awkward
conversation I never imagined having whereby I had to kindly ask my step-
mother to please stop using my deceased father's Facebook account. Granted, I
get on extremely well with my step-mother and I've no doubt she meant well -
it's quite likely she wanted to continue to use the account as way to remain
connected with my father.

Nonetheless, it didn't sit well with me (or my brothers) that those not "in
the know" would see those posts and not realise that not only was it not my
father, but that he was in fact dead.

I feel like society is very much in uncharted territory here.

~~~
duxup
My Grandfather died 3 years ago.

Still haven't taken him off my favorites contact list...

Google has a system for sending your account to someone else after a timeout
period. I thought it was a great idea until I got to the part where you're
given an opportunity to add a message.

Thinking of my kids / wife / family what went form an administrative task got
really heavy suddenly... i stopped at that point.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
You could copy my sorry but I'm dead message, it really is like this:

Hi <insert names>, I loved you all very much but I guess I died. Don't worry
about me. I set this up before I died so you could get into my accounts and
settle things. Enjoy your lives while you can!

Love <me>

------
giancarlostoro
Worse yet a relative of mine passed away almost 10 years ago due to an
accident. His "other family" decided to take over his account. They used it to
spam insults towards someone who was there during the accident and threw blame
for the death. It was disgraceful.

There is no way for me to tell Facebook to ban the profile no matter what I
tried. I see the same issue on Instagram for very specific issues you cannot
report profiles. I even wrote in a textbox "this person is dead!" and Facebook
didnt bother. If its an active account its good for business right?

In the case of Instagram a music artist I follow got hacked. The Instagram
report system is completely useless in this regard. He is a verified user too.
Nothing was done and probably nothing will be done. Active accounts are good
for business even if they are hacked or diseased peoples accounts (same thing
tbh).

~~~
albedoa
> I see the same issue on Instagram for very specific issues you cannot report
> profiles.

It came up recently that in order to report an imposter account, you have to
tag the person who the account is impersonating.

So if that person doesn't have a known account, as is the case with Katie
Bouman, there is no in-app mechanism for reporting it. Even when the issue was
brought to them directly, Instagram asked what her main account is:

[https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/11168119898195107...](https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1116811989819510789)

The result is that a redpiller with tens of thousands of existing followers
from previously impersonating others using the same account is allowed to call
himself and operate as the "official" Katie Bouman account. It's a great
system.

~~~
gowld
Hmm, if IG allows an impersonation account as long as no "official" account
exists, you could try creating a second impersonation account and claiming it
is official in the report of the first impersonation.

Put IG back on the spot to make a call.

------
tenaciousDaniel
One thing I find fascinating, and have not seen discussed, is what will happen
to all this data in, say, a couple hundred years.

We have tons of diaries from people in 18th and 19th centuries, and they
provide a uniquely intimate glimpse of life in the past.

If there's any upside to our lives being recorded in such great detail, it's
that it will be a treasure trove for our descendants long after we're gone.

~~~
ardy42
> One thing I find fascinating, and have not seen discussed, is what will
> happen to all this data in, say, a couple hundred years.

My prediction: If Facebook looses popularity like MySpace: it will hold onto
dead people's profiles as long as possible, until it finally goes out of
business or its skeleton team of developers makes a critical mistake. Their
business at that point will basically be like that of domain squatters.
They'll even start sharing things hidden from the public behind privacy
settings. If Facebook remains popular, however, it will eventually
aggressively purge the profiles of the dead to focus resources on more
lucrative monetization opportunities of active consumers.

~~~
epicide
Even if Facebook-the-product dies[0], Facebook-the-company will continue to be
around for a looong time. Even if they fall out of public favor, they have
enough money, enough data, enough business connections, etc. to continue for a
very long time [1].

Honestly, if somehow enough people actually manage to get mad enough at
Facebook for it to potentially affect their bottom line, they would likely use
Zuckerberg as a scapegoat and ditch him. People like to latch onto a single
individual as the problem, so that stunt would probably placate a lot of
people [2].

[0]: Even this seems very unlikely given how many deep ties they have into
peoples' lives. Keep in mind that it is far from just a social networking tool
or blogging platform.

[1]: Hell, they probably have enough money and blackmail data to do whatever
they want. Including blackmail.

[2]: Witch hunts are more popular than ever :)

~~~
CharlesColeman
> they would likely use Zuckerberg as a scapegoat and ditch him

IIRC, Zuckerberg has a controlling stake in Facebook through supervoting
shares, so he's not getting ditched unless he wants to be ditched.

~~~
smt88
> _so he 's not getting ditched unless he wants to be ditched_

I believe he can be removed from his executive role by a court if he's found
guilty of a crime (which I believe is likely in the next few years).

I'm not sure about his ownership of the company, but I think a court could
order him to transfer supervoting shares as part of a penalty.

But then that begs the question of whether the human individual, Mark
Zuckerberg, still owns those shares. They may be in some kind of trust that he
can never lose control over.

------
29aprthrowaway
Lurker here, apologies for the throwaway acct.

Today is the 2 year anniversary of my father's passing. I logged into his FB
account a few months after he died and my sister, who was online, saw a login
notification and messaged "hello?". I quickly explained that it was me (I was
given responsbility for organizing my father's digital assets post-mortem),
and instead of being weirded out, she said it was comforting to be messaging
with Dad's account and asked to chat for a while (we don't normally
communicate much).

Slightly off-topic, but a couple related issues I've had that might be useful
for others:

1\. Recently someone impersonated my Dad on FB and starting messaging other
family members. We were able to very quickly shut it down using FB's tools to
flag impersonating accounts - although it felt particularly offensive to have
someone impersonate your dead father for unknown, and likely unsavoury,
purposes.

2\. My dad's main email used a well-known email service that I won't name here
but which also has a reputation for relatively poor spam filtering. Going
through the incessant 100+ unfiltered daily spam emails from FB, Linkedin,
Twitter, bank, airlines, tickets, everywhere he ever shopped, "Don't miss
this!" etc in his Inbox made me realize that current screen-attention-capture
economy is particularly ill-suited for the declining faculties of older
adults. My Dad had early onset dementia and eventually lost the ability to use
his email shortly before he passed, but I'd say his experience with the
"Internet" in the few years before his passing was made significantly worse
through overbearing ads and spam which in retrospect likely took hours of his
day to go through as he became less and less able to exert his own agency to
avoid. Definitely a regret that I didn't realize this at the time and set up a
better system for him, tuned to his age/declining abilities.

3\. It's hard to let go, at least for me, and I also found comfort in my Dad's
digital leftovers...the idea that I was looking at representations of bits
that were flipped because of him, even if trivial, stored all around the
world. The best one was end of last year when that Breach Compilation password
dump was released...I did a quick query for my Dad's email address and up
popped his old password (since changed!) which was a very unique and
meaningful word in our family. That made me smile.

------
baron816
>Our analysis suggests that a minimum of 1.4 billion users will pass away
before 2100 if Facebook ceases to attract new users as of 2018.

Yep, every company’s customer/user base will die in 80 years if they don’t
grow at all.

------
menzoic
A co-worker of mine (lead architect) passed away a few months ago and his
messages still show up frequently in Slack history searches and git blames.
Feels weird that I could still DM the account.

------
akeck
The kids I know are, for now, skipping Facebook proper (for IG, etc.). If user
inflow ends up less than the death rate, it's somewhat inevitable that the
dead take over.

------
your-nanny
I had a Facebook friend who died, of cancer. For the next several months I
continued to receive product recommendations and other "activity"
notifications "from" her. At that point I decided Facebook was a dehumanizing
platform and quit.

~~~
Gibbon1
A friend died and after a few years his twitter account started occasionally
posting spam. I made a joke to his sister that he was trying to contact us
from beyond via twitter spam. She thought that was funny because that totally
would be him. But she had to close his account because it was real bothering
other people.

------
everdev
If the dead remain on social networks in perpetuity they'll make up a larger
and larger % of the user base and actually have a significant statistical
impact on the ratio of accounts vs. active users. It would take some sustained
high birth rates or a dramatic decrease in death rates to reverse this.

In an extreme example, assuming every human ever born had a Facebook account
there would be ~105B "memorial profiles" compared to ~7.5B "active users". Or,
about 93% of accounts would belong to the dead.

[https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/](https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/)

~~~
chillacy
I’m somehow amazed that everyone alive is a whopping 7% of everyone that ever
lived.

------
sumitgt
It is really nice that Facebook provides the "memorial" feature. Some
important sites like LinkedIn lack this.

I often get notifications asking me to "Congratulate ___ on completing 3 years
at ___" when I know that the person has passed away.

------
ghostbrainalpha
My question about Facebook data is regarding historical research. If Facebook
is around for 100-200 years, is there a point at which my data should no
longer be protected and private? Should historians have access to Obama's
private Facebook messages in 150 years just like we have Washington or
Jefferson's private correspondence?

~~~
lostlogin
They can do this now, I’m guessing the key is that is must make them moneyey.

From their terms of service: “We also provide information and content to
research partners and academics to conduct research that advances scholarship
and innovation that supports our business or mission and enhances discovery
and innovation on topics of general social welfare, technological advancement,
public interest, health and well-being.”

[https://m.facebook.com/about/privacy/update?refid=42](https://m.facebook.com/about/privacy/update?refid=42)

------
workingpatrick
Because their login requirements are annoying: [https://sci-
hub.tw/10.1177/2053951719842540](https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/2053951719842540)

------
MikeGale
There's some talk of regulation, and people who never knew individuals getting
in on the act.

For those who so choose, I'd prefer to see options: 1\. Person can set who
gets to see their content after they pass, before they pass away. A part of
their will. 2\. People having access to the content of the person who has
passed have ways to handle that as they wish. (Never see it, only see it when
I ask etc.)

For those who choose not to prepare in advance, they might get the default,
which they can change.

------
slackfan
Part of the reason I deleted my last quasi-anonymous FB account was the feed
page turning into an obituary section with more than a few old friends
passing.

------
matz1
Its facinating that this could cause cultural change on how most people relate
with death. Interesting time.

------
zackmorris
I thought this was going to be an article about online zombies, who are alive
but act like trolls (is there a word for this?)

So for example, say I post a political, religious or otherwise controversial
topic that says something about what used to be core values in the USA or
something. Maybe I feel there's some fresh insight, or a way of connecting
with people who don't agree with me so we can find common ground. 9 times out
of 10, the same handful of people I expect to disagree with, respond and say
the same thing I expected them to say.

In other words, I could have written the troll bot that would respond with
what they say. It's a mathematical way of saying that their comments are
precomputable, rather than coming from what we might consider free will.

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way? Maybe I'm the zombie, maybe we're all
zombies, I dunno :-)

------
PorterDuff
Huh. So can you script Friendface so that it sends out pre-scheduled posts?
Dead me could really mess with people that way.

Now that I think of it, it would be an interesting hobby to build a virtual
you that does things on Facebook.

~~~
toper-centage
Everyone on HN is dead except you.

~~~
PorterDuff
Solipsist News

------
jwilk
Direct link to PDF:

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/205395171984254...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053951719842540)

------
jacquesm
I wrote a piece about this a while ago:

[https://jacquesmattheij.com/deadbook-the-long-term-
facebook/](https://jacquesmattheij.com/deadbook-the-long-term-facebook/)

------
skykooler
Randall Munroe of XKCD had an interesting write-up on this question a few
years ago: [https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/69/)

------
Zenst
Whatever you think of social media, it has become for many a long past good
sole, a digital cemetery.

What happens if such social platforms pass away, which can happen as the case
with Google+.

Whilst we have charitable institutions and individuals who try and preserve
this part of history in all it's yearly nuances, much goes and passed by
(usenet archives) to the extent that sometimes such archives pass away.

Maybe now is the time to push a law that makes any social media platform
solidify how they handle such digital gravestones, respecting family wishes. I
appreciate many have on their own back organically have various forms of
progress upon this. But nothing makes them accountable, no standard, law that
preserves such gravestones of the digital age.

------
drivingmenuts
While historians love to peer into the minutiae of daily lives because, well,
historians, how much does knowing Great-great Aunt Ethyll’s thoughts on Karl
Marx actually affect us on a daily basis? How much will your predilection for
the song stylings of Kim Kardashian affect future generations in a meaningful
way?

While the aggregate opinions of the dead, while alive, might provide context
for people yet to be born, let the individuals Rest In Peace, slowly to be
forgotten. We don’t need to keep these profiles around for eternity (for one,
that will get expensive). Beyond an interesting point at some family reunion,
they won’t matter in any material way.

~~~
pilsetnieks
There are branches of archeology and paleontology studying ancient feces (look
up coprolites and paleofeces,) and deriving a lot of information about ancient
societies and animals. So you never know what will be deemed valuable in the
future.

My guess is that this will need a new kind of archeology. Much like the
postings, a lot of the research will be automated.

------
Fede_V
Slightly OT, but, did anyone else get echoes of Gogol looking at the paper? :)

------
b0rsuk
Sounds like a title of a parody horror movie!

------
pertymcpert
I really hope I pass away before my wife. I can’t imagine losing her. Selfish
probably...

------
DorothyPhillips
Well that's an odd thought. It seems inevitable though unless they suspend
accounts that are inactive after a certain period of time. I think facebook is
the one that needs to die though

------
p0rkbelly
Thought this was a GoT post.

