The USA Today recently gave a brief report concerning the victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre: “Slain Students Pages to Stay on Facebook”. The social networking website’s administration decided that these students’ profiles will not be taken down; instead, they will be remain frozen in their last updated state. This decision goes against Facebook’s policy of removing profiles of the recently deceased out of respect for their privacy, but this is not a new phenomenon. There is simply no way for these websites to keep track of which of their users are dead or alive - the dead are all online now; they “live” on websites like Livejournal, Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, or Flickr, and they’re not going anywhere.
Yikes. I don't think they realize how many small traumas this is going to cause. I'm still a little leery of signing on to Myspace ever since I saw a recently deceased acquaintance being advertised in the "cool new people in your area" section. What's worse was clicking through to his page and reading the comment posts by friends of his that clearly didn't know he had died.
BoingBoing: Facebook profiles, dead or alive. No, seriously. Dead? Or alive?
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