Facebook users who have died sometimes come up in the notifications box, urging other users to reconnect with them. For the loved ones who receive this kind of notification, it can be comforting to see their faces again, but often times and usually in the end, they will feel sad about it. Sometimes, it can be weird and even disturbing. This is the dilemma that Facebook is facing about how it deals with its dead members.
According to Meredith Chin, a spokeswoman for Facebook, this topic is a very sensitive one, and that they cannot keep up with the number of Facebook members who dies every day, in as much as they can’t keep up with the number of new users that come in every day.
There was a time in the past where most of the Facebook users belong to the younger generation. However, this has all changed, and in fact, around 6.5 million people over 65 have signed up on Facebook for the month of May. This is of course the age where people have the highest mortality rate, so Facebook will have an even harder time dealing with this concern.
Before, Facebook simply deleted the profiles when they learned that the person who owned that is dead. Now, they allow special memorial profiles for people who have died, where people can still comment but no longer receive notifications, among others.
The Chinese government has now changed its mind about the internet. It now likes what it sees. Last Tuesday, they have called the internet, ‘the crystallization of human wisdom, the great scientific invention of the 20th century, an important indicator of advanced productivity’. This statement was published in a white paper they released entitled China’s Internet Situation. This paper says that the Chinese government acknowledges the importance of the internet in improving the lives of the Chinese people and its benefit to the economy.
