It’s a bit of an interesting dilemma for Facebook. Many people visit deceased friends’ pages and post to their walls much like a streetside memorial, creating sacred space in which they mourn. In fact Facebook’s new homepage released on the 23rd of this October generated automatic suggestions that people friend the profiles of the deceased until enough moral indignation was mustered against it and the practice discontinued.  Facebook still offers the bereaved an option to start their own memorial page for the deceased though. So on the one hand we have a moral obligation to maintain space where those who have suffered a loss can find comfort in social communion and on the other hand we have all that valuable information. Facebook and hundreds of thousands of app developers have made their bread and butter by gathering information about users on the site, and what they do with this information both while and after users have ceased living became a point of contention earlier this year for Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, among others.  

The Privacy Commissioner spoke just this week on the matter of Facebook privacy concerns after the site vocally encouraged the creation of memorial pages for the deceased (in response to the dead friend suggestion debacle). She remained resolute that the social media platform had not done enough since this August when the Canadian Federal Ministry made adamant claims of Facebook infringing on Canadian privacy rights. The policy changes that the site has made will be available next week but the Commission has been vocal that the site has not been particularly thorough enough in detailing how the information of the deceased is used. Imagine that, an explosively successful billion dollar corporation not being entirely transparent about its practices. What has this world come to?

And how does the photo at the top tie back to all of this you ask? I’m not sure it does, but it was too hilarious not to use. Feel free to leave comments below if you have some witty tie-it-all together comment.

Tags: available next week, Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Facebook, Facebook infringing on Canadian privacy rights, Facebook privacy concerns, friend the profiles of the deceased, information of the deceased

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