PALMER, Pa. (AP) - In the Facebook post he made Sunday, Jay Menzo once again stands side by side with his sister. In the photo he chose, they grin broadly at the camera, a happy time he returned to on what would have been her 49th birthday.
“I miss you more than words could ever express,” Menzo wrote to Lisa Menzo Santoro, his “Irish twin” born just one year ahead of him.
Menzo’s remembrance went out to a Facebook community brought together through his late sister’s memorial account, a decidedly 21st-century way of mourning that is becoming increasingly widespread, even as it raises sometimes thorny ethical issues.
Through her profile, her family and friends have kept her memory alive despite the tragedy of her death - murdered last year at her Palmer Township home by an abusive boyfriend days after she was granted a restraining order.
Menzo said he finds himself scrolling through her feeds, reading old greetings and quips they exchanged about growing up together in New Jersey. There’s celebratory posts by her about her four children. There are all the comments - little things, now with big meaning - that she made over the years.
He loves his sister’s account, he said, even though one thing about it keeps breaking his heart: photos of Santoro with her killer, Leonard Moser, captured in their time as boyfriend and girlfriend, without heed to the story’s ending.
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I have to now stare at pictures of her and her killer and it’s saddening. It’s horrific.
- Jay Menzo, brother of Lisa Menzo Santoro
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Menzo has been trying unsuccessfully to get Facebook to take down those pictures, saying they are causing unnecessary pain. But while the social media giant has pulled a few of the most prominent on her page, they have rebuffed the family’s requests that they be removed altogether, under a company policy in which memorial accounts are kept as they were when the person died.
“What happened to Lisa is a tragedy,” a Facebook representative wrote this month in an email Menzo provided to The Morning Call. “However, Facebook does not perform selective deletions of content from profiles after somebody dies. When Facebook maintains a profile after someone dies, a core principle is to honor the decisions the person made while they were alive and preserve the account as they left it.”
Facebook did not return a request for comment from The Morning Call.
Menzo said it is “ludicrous” to suggest his sister would have wanted her children to see photos of Moser, who shot her repeatedly in her garage March 3, 2017, then took his own life when police later confronted him outside of Phillipsburg.
“I have to now stare at pictures of her and her killer and it’s saddening. It’s horrific,” said Menzo, of Brick Township, N.J. “Not just me, but her kids.”
Patricia Menzo, his and Santoro’s mother, is now helping raise those children in Palmer.
“He was her killer,” Patricia Menzo said. “Because of him we have a memorial page.”
The impasse represents a thoroughly modern problem, as social media becomes a leading way in which people document their lives and, by extension, have them remembered after their deaths.
Social media experts say the family’s concerns raise questions over who controls a person’s legacy in the digital age and whether the broad and often impersonal policies of a massive company such as Facebook are sufficient to address the specific needs of its more than 2 billion users.
Robert Beck, a computer science professor at Villanova University, said discussions of social media companies’ larger ethical responsibility to society remain in their infancy.
“I guess it is nice that Facebook is following its core principle, but maybe it needs to rethink its core principle,” Beck said. “But how do you get them to change a core principle? How do you get any business, not even Facebook, to change a core principle?”
The family’s complaint comes at a time when the public has become skeptical of Facebook’s motives, amid high-profile concerns that the company isn’t protecting users’ privacy.
“This is an interesting time to be discussing this because I think there’s a greater awareness in the world that on Facebook, you’re not the customer, you’re the product,” said Evan Carroll, who co-authored a book about the digital afterlife and also blogs about the issue.
Carroll, of Raleigh, N.C., called Santoro’s account an “edge case” that tests the limits of Facebook’s policy for memorial accounts. He had little doubt that if the family’s concerns reached the right person in Facebook’s hierarchy, they would be addressed, though he said the company’s bureaucracy and algorithim-based decision making make that difficult.
“There should be an avenue by which an individual should be able to say, ’You know what, I don’t think the uniform policy works here, and I believe you should take a second look,’ ” Carroll said.
Memorial accounts are the outcrop of something that social media’s initial young inventors and young users probably paid little attention to: their own inevitable mortality. But by some estimates, accounts of dead Facebook users may one day outnumber those of the living.
To address what should happen with those profiles, Facebook developed what is, in effect, a means of high-tech estate planning. Users can notify the company that they want their accounts deleted when they die. Or they can appoint a “legacy contact,” a friend or family member who, upon a death, assumes limited control over the account, which becomes a place for loved ones to share memories.
For those who, like Santoro, did neither, Facebook also automatically memorializes their accounts. The words “Remembering” are placed next to the person’s name, the account can no longer be logged into, and the existing content “can’t be changed,” Facebook writes at its online Help Center.
Amy Lavin, an assistant professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, said Facebook’s policy was almost certainly built without circumstances like Santoro’s in mind.
“This is new. This is a fairly new issue that Facebook needs to figure out,” said Lavin, who teaches digital innovation.
She said that if Facebook receives enough complaints from enough users, it will act.
“If you think about Facebook as a platform that enables people to interact and connect with each other, they have a responsibility to ensure that everything they do is for the common good, that it is not detracting from someone’s experience,” Lavin said.
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This is a fairly new issue that Facebook needs to figure out.
- Amy Lavin, assistant professor at Temple University
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Even in the Lehigh Valley, Santoro isn’t the only murder victim with a digital afterlife.
Denise Merhi, 39, of Northampton was murdered June 26, 2010, along with her father, grandfather and a neighbor. Her public Facebook page stops the day before she was killed, when she posted pictures of a trip to the Jersey shore: one of a small seahorse, others of a flounder found on the beach.
Andrew “Beep” White, 32, of Easton was a prolific Facebook user when he was alive, friends and family have said. More than three years after he was shot to death in a downtown hotel room, his memorial page still has 1,852 friends, and dozens of smiling selfies.
Francine Ramos, 32, of Allentown was one of three people gunned down in a random shooting spree in the Lehigh Valley on July 5, 2015. Her profile features regular posts by friends and family on Mother’s Day, Christmas and other sensitive times.
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In effect, if we think about that social network, the deceased is still able to play a role in that social network, even though the person is no longer there.
- Evan Carroll, co-author of a book on the digital afterlife
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“Can’t believe it’s been 2 yrs..You’re so loved by many,” one woman wrote last year on the anniversary of Ramos’ death.
Carroll, the author and blogger, said social media offers a powerful venue for communal grief.
“It’s a way to remember someone in the everyday course of life,” Carroll said. “In effect, if we think about that social network, the deceased is still able to play a role in that social network, even though the person is no longer there.”
Jay Menzo said he is terrified of losing that.
Facebook has suggested to the family that they save photos from Santoro’s profile that they wish to keep, and create a new memorial page to her, he said. But that would lose all the comments that have built up on her account over the years, he said, and the community that already exists.
“I write her messages on there that her friends get to see and interact with,” Menzo said. “The birthday wishes that she sent me a year ago, they pop up in my memories. I don’t want that to go away.”
His greatest worry, he said, is that Facebook will take down his sister’s account altogether. He’ll do whatever it takes to avoid that.
“To have all the good stuff,” Menzo said, he’ll even continue to stomach pictures of Moser.
Sidebar:
How to plan your Facebook legacy
Facebook, like other social media companies, has established policies on how to handle the accounts of users who die.
As a general rule, Facebook automatically memorializes those profiles. The word “Remembering” is shown next to the person’s name and the account becomes a space for others to share memories. No one is able to log into the account, and its existing content can’t be changed.
But Facebook allows you two options under which you can plan for the eventuality of death. Both can be accessed under your account’s settings.
1) Users can notify Facebook of their desire to have their account permanently deleted upon their death.
2) Users can appoint a so-called legacy contact who, upon a death, assumes limited control over the memorial account. That person acts as a moderator, changing profile pictures or accepting new friend requests, but cannot remove past posts, photos or other content. Legacy contacts can also request that an account be deleted.
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Online:
https://bit.ly/2vMg3uH
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Information from: The Morning Call, http://www.mcall.com
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