A former Marine signed onto Facebook last week and announced he was going to take his own life.  He documented the process with graphic photos including a final post that said “Im leakinging good now.”   While he lay dying in an unoccupied building, his Marine Corps. buddies were frantically trying to locate him and plead with him to not kill himself.  After his death, Facebook did not remove the graphic photos of his final moments because “they did not violate the terms of community service.”  Eventually, Facebook temporarily removed the account pending a ruling from his family.  In a nutshell, if a person dies, the options for his Facebook account are to memorialize the account or for the family to remove it.  Meanwhile, the former Marines used Facebook to reach out to their comrades who might be struggling and offered to drop everything they were doing to assist one another.

Several points:

1.  People should address their digital assets in their wills and give their executor the authority to dispose of or transfer the digital assets.

2.  One can always count on Facebook to do the wrong thing.

3.  The brotherhood of the Marines is awesome beyond description.