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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what happens when a Facebook user dies. Is their timeline going to have pictures of their funeral at the top then? This is just depressing.

Edit: This is a serious question.

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No actually it is memorialized and family members can request removal.

https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=13941

I wonder what facebook will do when a significant portion (let's say 10%) of it's user base has passed away.

Is the data of a past life still worth something to them? Will they spend the money to keep it? I bet that anthropologists and sociologists would love to get their hands on historical data.

Also, I suppose the data of a famous person might be worth a lot in 50 years, like the publishing of a president's diary.

I can see it now "See the hidden facebook messages of Lady Gaga"

If current trends continue, anthropologists will be just about the only people left that may give a shit about anything that happened 50 years prior.

facebook has had huge problems, in my opinion, with how they react to people dying for quite some time now - a friend of mine died several years back and facebook often asked me to send him a message because we hadn't interacted in a while. haven't seen this sort of thing quite as much in a while (although he does show up as offline from time to time, in my chat list on the right side of the new facebook design) but it's a tricky problem and one that certainly can mar the experience. i imagine it would be far worse if you saw this sort of thing after your spouse, child, or parent died.

There's a process to memorialise the account of a user that passes away - help docs at https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=150486848354038

Here's the form for friends:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=deceased

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