Yorick Wilks

Facebook has decided to treat the dead differently at last, so breaking through the old problem that, just as on the web you couldnt tell someone was a dog–as in the famous New Yorker cartoon–similarly you couldnt tell they were dead. Facebook now proposes to “freeze” and “memorialise” he sites of those who someone officially declares to be dead—though quite how you get a death certificate to Facebook isnt yet clear. Someone blogged somewhere recently that “if he didnt hear from his friends every hour he assumed they were dead”. Hopefully, it wont come to that!

The Facebook proposal is that only friends you have accepted before death will be able to find your “frozen” site, see it and add tributes to it. That seems a bit strong: after all, many others might care to jojn in a tribute after your death who didnt happen to have been your friend on Facebook in life–perhaps you relatives or children? Is there any more reason to fear malicious postings by those who know you already, as opposed to those who dont? In any case, it wouldnt be hard to have a truster “executor” or “Facebook filterer” who removed any malicious postings—such people could be appointed in wills in the future, as literary executors are now. The tricky bit will be using “defriend” to rid yourself of a growing list of dead friends—–but the huge mass of young users dont need to think about that just yet.