Legacy Contact: Designing and Implementing Post-mortem Stewardship at
Facebook
Managing Design for Life Disruptions
/
Brubaker, Jed R.
/
Callison-Burch, Vanessa
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.2908-2919
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Post-mortem profiles on social network sites serve as both an archive of the
deceased person's life and a gathering place for friends and loved ones. Many
existing systems utilize inheritance as a model for post-mortem data
management. However, the social and networked nature of personal data on social
media, as well as the memorializing practices in which friends engage, indicate
that other approaches are necessary. In this paper, we articulate the design
choices made throughout the development of Legacy Contact, a post-mortem data
management solution designed and deployed at Facebook. Building on the duties
and responsibilities identified by Brubaker et al., we describe how Legacy
Contact was designed to honor last requests, provide information surrounding
death, preserve the memory of the deceased, and facilitate memorializing
practices. We provide details around the design of the Legacy Contact selection
process, the functionality provided to legacy contacts after accounts have been
memorialized, and changes made to post-mortem profiles.