Facebook Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone, Preserves The Deceased

Ken AshfordPopular Culture, Random MusingsLeave a Comment

(1)  This annoying live feed thing can be "fixed" with a little workaround.  Simply click and drag your "status updates" on that lefthand column, and place it above the "news feeds".  Facebook will now appear close to what it was before.

(2)  Facebook is now urging you to "reconnect" with your friends that you haven't interacted with in a while.  Why?  Why is it any of Facebook's business?  This isn't going over too well, by the way:

On Twitter, a storm of complaints and jokes popped up about the Reconnect feature, such as user jessefarmer, who wrote, “‘Facebook’s “reconnect with him’ feature just recommended I write on a dead friend’s wall.” User KenHuffman tweeted, “Facebook is suggesting that I reconnect with my wife by writing on her wall. I’m thinking coming home every night is a tad more effective,” while Jweiler wrote, “OH: The new “reconnect” feature on Facebook could be renamed “Unfriend Suggestion.”

(3)  And speaking of the dead on Facebook, Facebook clarified its "dead person" policy yesterday — they will leave their page and profile up, upon request:

Obviously, we wanted to be able to model people's relationships on Facebook, but how do you deal with an interaction with someone who is no longer able to log on? When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of "memorialized" profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed.

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When an account is memorialized, we also set privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. We try to protect the deceased's privacy by removing sensitive information such as contact information and status updates. Memorializing an account also prevents anyone from logging into it in the future, while still enabling friends and family to leave posts on the profile Wall in remembrance.

If you have a friend or a family member whose profile should be memorialized, please contact us, so their memory can properly live on among their friends on Facebook.

Nice touch, I guess.

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