Hacker News Reader

Comment by 734786710934 | Hacker News Reader

Favebook’s policy for not giving information to family members came out of situations where the decreased was not on good terms with their family. When to give out information and to whom are not obvious or easy decisions when you have a billion users.

View on HN

This. It is hard to imagine a situation in which providing information on the identity of person who requested the removal of a dead person's profile to an aggrieved party is going to result in anything other than the harassment of that person. Especially in circumstances like this when that person may well have felt they were acting reasonably, and does not appear to have committed any actual criminal or civil offence.

Facebook's responsibility to not promote the harassment of its users exceeds its responsibility to provide details of why they carried out a request.

Additionally, Facebook had some reason to believe that even if they wanted to doxx that person, disclosing their communication to a third party without that person's own permission may have been a breach of UK/EU data protection laws

Thank you! Amount of insane comments here is deeply disturbing.

Deceased person could have "secret" lover whom he was going to marry. He could have secret son who had more right to decide what to do with the page than anyone else.

He wasn't married to person who harassed Facebook. He could have relations with dozen other women all of whom asked fb to erase all history of it including messages and photos. Grieving person might try to demand restoring profile and giving her access to it so she could identify them and make their life living hell. Yes this might sound farfetched and a little bit insane but stories like this really happen all over the globe thousands time a day.

Its easy to agree with fb here especially because "widow" couldn't possibly do anything good with requested information.

As I already wrote: Nobody (reasonable) asks them to do anything other than TALK. If that is the issue, then say so! Of course, they would also have to provide a way out if the issue can be shown to be invalid.

From the article: Ms Sabados said she spent a year talking to Facebook before pursuing legal action.

Thank you!

I don't want my scumbag parents or extended family getting information about who is carrying out my affairs from random companies after I die. There's a reason why I'm planning on writing a will to specifically exclude them from any sort of inheritance if my husband and I died together.

Plus these were unmarried partners!! Unlike spouses, unmarried partners have no legal standing as next of kin in most of the world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com