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
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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 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.
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.
They can have a checkbox "I'm not quite dead!" - also known in physical industries as "dead man's switch".