Social media and the departed
Alina beat me to the punch in pointing out the rather broad coverage devoted to the new Facebook “recommend” functionality and the deceased.
According the The Guardian, it seems that Facebook actually has a mechanism for dealing with profiles of the dead.
“‘When someone leaves us, they don’t leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of ‘memorialised’ profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who’ve passed,’ explained Max Kelly, Facebook head of security, on the company’s blog.
But what does it mean, that an account gets ‘memorialised’? The contact information and status updates are removed, and the profile is set private. No one can log into it any more. Only Facebook friends can locate the profile via search and leave posts on the wall for remembrance.“
Apparently, this mechanism isn’t well known, or perhaps well implemented, since Facebook is still recommending that people re-connect with dead friends.
Of course, there is a simple solution to the problem of … expired … accounts on social media networks.
If you plan to have birth date data in a user’s profile, build in a data structure that allows you to note the death date as well, and ensure there is a mechanism for a friend or family member to update the account with death information. Furthermore, integrate the idea that a user might pass away from the beginning of the design process.
It also might be beneficial to check new entries to the Social Security Death Index or a similar publicly query-able data source to get information on those who have died that may have been member of the site. Sure, that adds administrative overhead, but if you are saving your clients even a little bit of grief in the long run, it’s a worthwhile investment of resources, I think.
Should this be standard operating procedure for all social media sites? Feel free to discuss the idea in the comments.