I think facebook already has the infrastructure needed to recognize the death of a client, and thus the death of a “face.” It simply becomes a matter of feigning the algorithmically appropriate response.
No, I think it’s silly to look for a solution for a non-problem. YMMV.
But if it WAS a problem, my example would be a much more legitimate and common problem.
There’s a simple solution, for Facebook: don’t push unsolicited material on users. Or, failing that, don’t do it unless you’re reasonably sure you’re giving them something they want.
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Well for me that would be the ads, not a one a year “year in review”.
That’s what I’ve got Adblocker Plus for.
(Once in a while, I use some browser without adblocking configured, and I can’t fathom how people can bear to use the Internet at all like that.)
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Not universally easy. For several days, whenever I would open FB on my iPhone or iPad, it would “suggest” that I review and post my “My Year” scrapbook. Whenever I would pull down the menu and say “I don’t want to see this,” the app would close. Not the window, but the entire Facebook mobile app. Next time I would open the app, there would be another “Review and post” suggestion for “My Year.” “I don’t want to see this” was not a valid option, it seems.
I finally had to go into the desktop version of Facebook to tell it never to show that to me again. That stopped it.
Serious question since I deleted my Facebook account several years ago – does Facebook know when individuals with accounts have died?
There’s a form for next-of-kin to fill out, to convert a Facebook page into a “Memorial Page”. Otherwise, they don’t know.
Oh, they very likely know. They just don’t try to automatically do anything about it.
I was a little surprised when this thing popped up with the picture of my wife at the top. She died about six months ago. But unexpected reminders pop up all the time. I got two xmas cards from people who didn’t know about her death, and salesmen ask for her on the phone now and then. Getting resentful over this is silly; FB couldn’t know, and had no cruel intentions. We all grieve in our own way, and I hope you will find peace.
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Hospital sends customer survey to patient they killed.
Given that computers (not entirely unlike people) get things wrong, this would lead to living people being classified as dead based on bad/misinterpreted data, and lead to another kind of outrages.
With big enough datasets you cannot win.
…I am defending Facebook. Bleh…
Do you intend to be sarcastic, or are you actually tempting me? 
(And it’s drafts. Schematics are for the electrical subsystems. And in the Ford Pinto case you seem to be referring to, a simple mod would do the job, without the need for an entire from-scratch redesign.)
That could actually work. But then, how many would bother?
Given what impact getting it right can have to one’s susceptibility to marketing and propaganda, we should be glad they are bidding our time by still doing it somewhat wrong.
The “Filter Bubble” book describes the methods and their impacts better than I could in a short space.
In any bigger project there are WAY WAY WAY too many edge cases to consider them all. There always comes a moment to just bloody make that thing running. This is not an isocyanate release that can kill thousands, just a picture selection that happens to occasionally hurt some tender feelings.
We are getting way too oversensitive over everything and it takes the attention and resources away from where they could be actually helpful…
I’m on your side, and actually feel bad for some people. It must be damned hard to be righteously indignant all the time. Worse, the pressure to be right all the time must be absolutely crushing. You and I, we’re human and therefore imperfect. Us humans gotta stick together.
I wondered the same thing, but wanted to keep it to myself. Then I decided, what the hell, maybe Boundegar knows what they’re talking about. So I dug a little deeper, and hell’s bells, it turns out you’re right. Sorta. I’m actually acting on a hunch that your post was phrased poorly, or downright wrong, because based on what I can tell, he sits around on Facebook, thinking a lot about the one he’s lost.
Maybe you didn’t put it in the most sensitive way, but essentially, you’re right; Eric S. Meyer’s coping mechanism seems to be to post about his daughter, a lot, or at least that the majority of his posts are about his undoubtedly crushing loss. It’s no wonder, then, that the Facebook algorithm thought that’s what his year looked like; it was. To quote the first episode of Deep Space Nine, “If what you say is true, why do you exist here?”
I don’t say this to defend Facebook’s annoying policy of pulling seemingly random things from our timeline, or to condemn Eric S. Meyer for dwelling on a traumatic moment in his life; I’m merely stating that hey people, do some research before you go on a lengthy tirade against a fellow user. And along those lines: hey, before people pile on a fellow user, report them, get them banned, and so on, how about finding out if they really meant what you think they meant?
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What the fuck, man.
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The coders very likely had zero say in the matter. They’re given requirements to implement from BAs (Business Analysts) or an equivalent. Facebook isn’t a small startup made up a half a dozen programmers lacking social skills. But “those computer geeks” are always a easy target since they’re not around to defend themselves.
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They know if someone alerts them to the death. I’ve seen some profiles put into a “memorialized” state that preserves their content they shared. One of my friends who was killed this summer still has a profile up but I don’t want to ask to have it memorialized because her friends still stop by to leave comments on her wall in the belief that she will see them from heaven. Though that’s not my belief, it seems to give comfort to her other friends to have a place to share their emotions and memories about her and her life.
Also a member of their immediate family can request that the profile be erased completely.
I honestly don’t see how Facebook is responsible for any of this. If you think you might have a problem, don’t click on the link to make yourself a year in review page. Simple.
I think Facebook knowingly capitalizes on people attributing this kind of extreme insensitivity and tone-deafness on a computer algoirthm.
Facebook has been trying to get me to tell it where I went to school and university for several years now, and I never tell it. If a person kept repeatedly asking me for information I that i refused to give them, that behaviour would be extremely creepy and annoying. Similarly, if I person kept forgetting my preference for something every single time I asked them (‘most recent’ order rather than ‘top posts’, please), it would get incredibly irritating.
These are explicit choices made by Facebook. They have decided to constantly forget your preference to see posts in chronological order, and they have decided to ignore the fact that you obviously don’t wish to tell them about where you went to school, but they know they can get away with it because coming from a computer it seems less like deliberate malice.
Similarly, they will have chosen to always show a preview or their year in review feature because they will have some data that suggests that they get more user engagement that way, and they will do almost anything they can to improve ‘user engagement’. There will have been a lot of people involved with the development of that feature. They will probably have also rolled it out to some subsection of their users before the rest of us for testing, so I refuse to believe that nobody involved will have realised that the picture they choose for it might be inappropriate or upsetting for some users. However, because putting in a ‘preview year in review Y/N’ button would probably halve their clickthrough and engagement they chose not to ive a fuck and do it anyway.
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Well I didn’t mean to make the point that strongly, but I was struck that he says he doesn’t want to be reminded… well, he says “some people” don’t want to be reminded of the recent past. That’s a normal feeling, but maybe not a very healthy way to address pain. Nevertheless, if you really want to forget your life, maybe Facebook is the wrong way to do that. Maybe you’d be happier turning off the internet and watching TV.
Also, I really didn’t say that stuff about how I’m wonderful and everybody else is terrible; I said I’m not angry. I hope I don’t get banned from the internet for failure to outrage.
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Yeah, a very good friend died this year, and I’m having a hard enough time dealing with it. I don’t need to be dragged through my recent past by an algorithm - I haven’t looked at any of the ‘year in review’ things since so many of my friends were part of this whole thing.
I definitely didn’t share it.
I still have a profile picture of me and my friend, as a tribute, as do a lot of us, but I don’t want to see the mess that a computer program would make of a complex and trying time…
