It's not hard, but you need to know that telling FB that your friend is dead is even an option, then go search for that. For most of us that probably seems pretty simple, but we're definitely the outliers in regards to technical sophistication and knowing how a site 'should' work.
In addition, there's the 'etiquette' of trying to figure out if you, as a friend, should do that, or whether you should leave it to their family, and then wondering if their family even knows about their FB profile, etc.
As the article pointed out, 'there are likely far more accounts that haven't been memorialized' - which suggests that people don't do it.
That's fair. If I didn't do it for my mom, I doubt it'd have been done. I don't even think I'd consider doing it for a friend, that's something I'd leave in the hands of whoever has the death certificate.
Facebook surely indexes a lot of the internet, "AI techniques" like entity resolution on obituaries would probably go a long way to finding unreported deaths.
Probably that once you do it, if the account holder had previously set it up so, you might end up triggering deletion of their account. A lesser caveat is that without a previously specified caretaker, the account will become totally locked down, whereas a caretaker can still change the photos or pin messages etc.
Birthday reminders are one of the reasons I've practically abandoned Facebook.
Seeing people wish you happy birthday on there by clicking a button encapsulates how false the narrative is; if the reason you remembered my birthday is that Facebook told you then we don't have a relationship where you should be sending me a birthday message.
The only thing more annoying is that now LinkedIn does it too. That's just weird.
Of the relationships where you should be sending people a birthday message, do you have all of their birthdays memorized, or do you use a calendar? I dont really see the difference between using facebook or a gmail calendar for reminders such as these.
I'll agree that the simple "Happy Birthday" messages people post on facebook are trite, but rather frequently I'm reminded that it's someone's birthday via facebook and then text or call the person.
Of the relationships where you should be sending people a birthday message, do you have all of their birthdays memorized, or do you use a calendar?
I'm not the OP, but yes, I have a calendar with people's birthdays in it. Every computer since the 1980's comes with a calendar program, and now they sync to your mobile phone, so there's no need to pass responsibility for that sort of thing to Facebook.
I also send (gasp) paper birthday and Christmas cards to the people who mean a lot to me. And from what they tell me, getting a real card in the mail means a million times more to them, since they know I took time out of my life to think of them and didn't just click a button and move on.
But you bought a pre-produced, mass-printed card that someone else designed. Not very personal. How is that much different from a clicky-greeting on Facebook, other than cost?
The difference between Facebook and a calendar is that adding someone's birthday to my calendar requires effort. I need to find out when their birthday is, and I need to set up a reminder. It's a small but important difference.
I mean, just because nobody explicitly inquires about something doesn't mean it's irrelevant. If you got a gift from an old friend (or even a happy birthday message) and then somehow found out it was only because someone else had pressured them into doing that, would it mean the same thing to you as if it had been their own independent decision? Most people wouldn't...
I think the distinction between the two platforms is that Facebook's approach assumes some level of personal connection between accounts, and users have bought into that expectation.
LinkedIn is the online version of a collection of business cards. Sending a birthday card is a typical business development practice that is difficult, in my opinion, to take seriously or take much offense from.
> Seeing people wish you happy birthday on there by clicking a button encapsulates how false the narrative is; if the reason you remembered my birthday is that Facebook told you then we don't have a relationship where you should be sending me a birthday message.
It's only as genuine or fake as you make it be. I'm sure you don't keep in touch with 100% of the people who made positive contributions to your life. You can take this as a less-awkward opportunity to wish them well, and maybe get back in touch if you feel like it, instead of living life as if their existence doesn't matter to you. Or you could not... you could do something else, or you could do nothing if you don't want to do anything with people you don't regularly keep in touch with. It's up to you how real it is and what it means; that you can only think of false narratives for it doesn't mean it is or needs to be that way.
I still use Facebook a few times a week because it does still have some utility to me, but I stopped wishing anyone happy birthday on there as soon as the feature was realized by the masses. What's one more wish among the hundreds who robotically do so at the press of a button. I don't mean to disparage them, though. Just that it's crossed the bridge of _too_ impersonal to be effective.
The reminder can still be useful though. Once in a while I'll see a reminder for a birthday of someone I would genuinely like to reach out to, and I'll call or text or email them. I still have calendar reminders for birthdays from before all of this when I was meticulously curating my own contact list with birthdays, but Facebook's birthday list is more complete than my old calendar, especially for my younger friends / relatives.
>if the reason you remembered my birthday is that Facebook told you then we don't have a relationship where you should be sending me a birthday message.
People used to keep this information in their personal planners. How is this different?
Facebook is what you make it. Why are you friends with people you don't care for? 99% of the complaints I hear are because people don't like what others post or do on there, but yet they're still connected as "friends".
Having 100s of relationships isn't real, nobody can actually maintain that many. Trim it down to people you care about and suddenly everything gets better.
Shortly before I deactivated my Facebook account, I changed my birthday to 6 months from the reality. Lots of well-wishes on the wrong date. I knew it was time to leave.
>Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Monday announced that the social network will use artificial intelligence to determine when someone has died, and stop sending those kinds of notifications.
Can't wait until the facebook neural net declares me dead because of my sclerotic post activity and my family thinks I've kicked the bucket when they don't get an announcenment on my birthday.
Maybe instead of trying to solve everything with 'artificial intelligence' we ought to design these systems in ways that are less prone to these sorts of misbehaviours. Seems like building systems that work 80% of the time and then hoping that throwing ML engineers at the issue solves the last 20% is the new hot design pattern.
Your family’s only measure on whether you’re alive or not is the yearly birthday reminder from Facebook?
In all seriousness, what do you expect them to do? They can’t have a checkbox “I am dead” for you to click after you pass, so they’re using a bit of data science to try and reduce the heartache of accidentally reminding someone when you might be dead.
I’m no fan of facebook, I don’t have an account and I think they are a net negative in the world, but sometimes they’re just trying to do the right thing, and credit where it’s due
I learned that you can have a birthday every 10'ish months and no one will notice. (Except for people who actually know when it's your birthday obviously.) More than that and people will start to catch on.
I’m sure whatever technical achievement solved this problem will somehow lead to people instead offering condolences on the passing of their still-living friends.
> Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Monday announced that the social network will use artificial intelligence to determine when someone has died, and stop sending those kinds of notifications.
Since there is no way Facebook will get 100% recall: no, it will not stop doing that.
This kind of reminder can happen even if the person isn't on Facebook. Every few months, a "Hey, remember this from 5 years ago?" photo pops up with a now-deceased friend of mine. It's depressing, and my effort to get Facebook to stop showing me "Do you want to share this memory?" photos has failed. She wasn't even on Facebook. I suppose I could go through all my old photos and delete them, but I'd prefer not to be prompted at all.
AI seems to have become the default solution for any of Facebook's problems with its platform. It sounds great, but I start to wonder how practical is it. Can they really determine if you are died with high probability? You would need quite a lot of personal data from your friends and family to determine that. oh wait..
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadIt's not hard, but you need to know that telling FB that your friend is dead is even an option, then go search for that. For most of us that probably seems pretty simple, but we're definitely the outliers in regards to technical sophistication and knowing how a site 'should' work.
In addition, there's the 'etiquette' of trying to figure out if you, as a friend, should do that, or whether you should leave it to their family, and then wondering if their family even knows about their FB profile, etc.
As the article pointed out, 'there are likely far more accounts that haven't been memorialized' - which suggests that people don't do it.
Facebook surely indexes a lot of the internet, "AI techniques" like entity resolution on obituaries would probably go a long way to finding unreported deaths.
Seeing people wish you happy birthday on there by clicking a button encapsulates how false the narrative is; if the reason you remembered my birthday is that Facebook told you then we don't have a relationship where you should be sending me a birthday message.
The only thing more annoying is that now LinkedIn does it too. That's just weird.
I'll agree that the simple "Happy Birthday" messages people post on facebook are trite, but rather frequently I'm reminded that it's someone's birthday via facebook and then text or call the person.
I'm not the OP, but yes, I have a calendar with people's birthdays in it. Every computer since the 1980's comes with a calendar program, and now they sync to your mobile phone, so there's no need to pass responsibility for that sort of thing to Facebook.
I also send (gasp) paper birthday and Christmas cards to the people who mean a lot to me. And from what they tell me, getting a real card in the mail means a million times more to them, since they know I took time out of my life to think of them and didn't just click a button and move on.
Me too, it's called Facebook.
> I also send (gasp) paper birthday and Christmas cards to the people who mean a lot to me.
Same but for those people who haven't shared their addresses , a Facebook post and/or message suffices.
Nor have I ever asked anyone that sent me a happy birthday text or call how they knew.
What matters is what you do once it's someone's birthday, not how you found out or keep track.
To me this is markedly different than your scenario where Bob nags Alice until she relents and wishes me happy birthday.
Your gcal says "Wish your friends a happy birthday!" above a box it pops up for you to do so?
The difference is that you consciously choose whose birthdays you enter into your calendar. Facebook just assumes anyone you know is close enough.
I surely do. It's not a problem to memorize a few numbers related to the people significant to me enough to send them a birthday message.
The Dunbar numbers go around 3-5, 9-15, 30-45 [0], so even "the 2nd tier" relationships' birthdays are not really that hard to remember
[0] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2004...
LinkedIn is the online version of a collection of business cards. Sending a birthday card is a typical business development practice that is difficult, in my opinion, to take seriously or take much offense from.
It's only as genuine or fake as you make it be. I'm sure you don't keep in touch with 100% of the people who made positive contributions to your life. You can take this as a less-awkward opportunity to wish them well, and maybe get back in touch if you feel like it, instead of living life as if their existence doesn't matter to you. Or you could not... you could do something else, or you could do nothing if you don't want to do anything with people you don't regularly keep in touch with. It's up to you how real it is and what it means; that you can only think of false narratives for it doesn't mean it is or needs to be that way.
The reminder can still be useful though. Once in a while I'll see a reminder for a birthday of someone I would genuinely like to reach out to, and I'll call or text or email them. I still have calendar reminders for birthdays from before all of this when I was meticulously curating my own contact list with birthdays, but Facebook's birthday list is more complete than my old calendar, especially for my younger friends / relatives.
People used to keep this information in their personal planners. How is this different?
Caring enough about that person to write it in a personal planner, and then doing something when you see that reminder is 'the thought that counts'.
Having 100s of relationships isn't real, nobody can actually maintain that many. Trim it down to people you care about and suddenly everything gets better.
Can't wait until the facebook neural net declares me dead because of my sclerotic post activity and my family thinks I've kicked the bucket when they don't get an announcenment on my birthday.
Maybe instead of trying to solve everything with 'artificial intelligence' we ought to design these systems in ways that are less prone to these sorts of misbehaviours. Seems like building systems that work 80% of the time and then hoping that throwing ML engineers at the issue solves the last 20% is the new hot design pattern.
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
In all seriousness, what do you expect them to do? They can’t have a checkbox “I am dead” for you to click after you pass, so they’re using a bit of data science to try and reduce the heartache of accidentally reminding someone when you might be dead.
I’m no fan of facebook, I don’t have an account and I think they are a net negative in the world, but sometimes they’re just trying to do the right thing, and credit where it’s due
I work in a foreign country, so I guess there's the possibility that remote family might at least be concerned if something like that happened.
>In all seriousness, what do you expect them to do?
give me control over when I broadcast out birthday reminders, because as an infrequent user I would simply turn it off. Problem solved.
Obviously it is not in Facebook's interest to give me control over my feed or activity to this degree, so it will never happen.
I ended up having generic happy-birthday wishes by the same people over and over.
Was pretty embarrassing but my close friends present, who knew my real birthday, said nothing.
I was so flattered by the gesture I didn't have the heart to tell him my birthday was not in May.
Everything about Facebook looks terrible
Since there is no way Facebook will get 100% recall: no, it will not stop doing that.
Like the happy memories of my ex-wife which are now a tragedy to me -- that everyday Facebook wants to remind me about. I don't use facebook much.
There should be a filter button such that I can say, "I don't want to hear about this person anymore."