Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Facebook Won’t Remove My Dead Brother’s Page

Excerpt from: The Consumerist (click for full article)

 

Yes, Facebook allows memorial pages, but that’s not what Sylvie wants. Her family wants the page gone, and Facebook seems as unwilling to do that now as they were when we posted about a similar situation four years ago. We’re going through our file of contacts to find someone at Facebook who might be able to help. If you’ve successfully had a relative’s page taken down, let us know how by e-mail.

New Service Helps Put a Dollar Value on Lawyers' Social Media Efforts

Excerpt from: Law.com (click for full article)

 

Statistics can be illuminating for web-savvy lawyers, too. Carl Shusterman, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles, launched his website in 1995 and also uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. The data from Avvo Ignite showed that LinkedIn wasn't yielding many inquiries. His YouTube videos created a lot of buzz, but Shusterman decided to tweak his content on that channel anyway. He now ends each video by encouraging viewers to schedule consultations.

"The data brings certain business considerations to the very fore of your consciousness," he said. "If I'm spending tons of time on something, I should find out how to use it more effectively or scratch it because you can't practice law and do all of this."

Some consumer-oriented lawyers already use social media to generate the lion's share of their business, Dayton said. For lawyers who are just starting to dabble online, Avvo Ignite may motivate them to keep at it by showing them the results, even if they are small at first, he noted.

"The reason most lawyers don't make it past the first 48 hours using social media is because they don't see anything happening," he said.

Death On Facebook Now Common As 'Dead Profiles' Create Vast Virtual Cemetery

Excerpt from: Huffington Post (click for full article)

 

Since the beginning of the Web, it's been plausible that pieces of information about people with Web sites and email accounts would be left accessible after they died. But the virtual cemetery is fairly new. One of the oldest online memorials is the U.K.-based Virtual Memorial Garden, which began in 1995. A simple, alphabetized collection of tens of thousands of paragraph-long, user-submitted memories of the dead, it's still growing. Since social media first gained mass appeal a decade ago with Friendster (2002) and MySpace (2003), online profiles have outlived their creators. But the skyrocketing growth of Facebook has created a new terrain for death on the Internet.

There are clear rules for how next of kin can inherit or delete accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the countless other online manifestations of ourselves that have proliferated. Usually, family members have to submit an obituary, news article or death certificate to verify the user is dead. But unless there's a request, the rules on death are rarely enforced on social networks. Facebook allows only the living user of a registered account to have access to it -- families can't get full access to profiles unless there's documented instruction from the deceased. In a rare case in June, a Wisconsin couple obtained a court order for Facebook to give them access to the personal messages in their 23-year-old son's account after he committed suicide.

 

Social Media Help Diabetes Patients (And Drugmakers) Connect

Excerpt from: NPR (click for full article)

 

When Kerri Sparling was 7 years old, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Her family didn't know anyone with the disease, so they sent her to diabetes camp — "where every single camper had Type 1 diabetes," she says.

"That was my first sense of not only other people who had diabetes, but a true community," says Sparling.

Things are very different today. About 26 million Americans have diabetes — mostly Type 2 — and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that as many as one-third of adults could have diabetes by 2050.  

People living with diabetes have created a vibrant online community. Big drug companies are certainly taking notice — and some advocacy groups feel that the Food and Drug Administration should as well.

Posting That Legal Notice In Your Facebook Timeline Doesn’t Do Anything To Protect Your Privacy

Excerpt from: The Consumerist (click for full article)

 

With hours to go before Thanksgiving, Facebook sent out a little e-mail last week alerting users to some proposed changes to the company’s privacy policies. In response, a number of users have copy/pasted a supposed legal notice they think will protect their status updates and images from being used commercially. It won’t.

By joining Facebook, you have already agreed to license the content you post. Simply posting a legal notice declaring your independence from terms you’ve already agreed to (whether you read them or not) won’t change the facts.

“You can tell Facebook how it is all you like — and even demand Mark Zuckerberg give you his firstborn child if he doesn’t obey your demands,” writes GigaOm’s Jeff John Roberts. “But that doesn’t mean your claims have any legal effect.”

Regarding the popping-up of these legal notices, Jeff Bercovici writes on Forbes.com, “As any anthropologist can tell you, introducing a new threat into an information-starved society inevitably results in the adoption of new superstitions as frightened individuals grasp at anything that might offer protection.”