Facebook is giving a mourning father a chance to see his deceased son's Look Back video. The father, John Berlin, posted an emotional plea to Facebook on YouTube, asking to see his son's video. The video went viral and a local news station helped Berlin connect with Facebook.
Berlin's son, Jesse Berlin, died at the age of 22 on Jan. 28, 2012. His father does not have access to his son's Facebook account, but after seeing his own Look Back video, Berlin decided to take a chance and ask Facebook if it would share his son's video with him. He posted an emotional video on YouTube, which quickly went viral.
"You ever do something crazy because you just don't know what to do anymore?" Berlin asks in the video. "Well that's what I'm doing right now."
"You've been putting out these one-minute movies that everyone has been sharing," he continues. "I think they're great...All we want to do is see his movie. I know it's a shot in the dark but I don't care."
Berlin added documentation to the video to prove that it was not a hoax. Facebook did not respond immediately, so local news station Pix 11 stepped in to help him get in contact with Facebook. A Facebook spokesperson told Pix 11 that the company had tried to contact Berlin and failed. The news station then gave Facebook several different ways to call Berlin. Shortly thereafter, Berlin confirmed that Facebook had decided to grant his request.
"It worked I was just contacted by FB by phone and they're going to make a vid just for us," Berlin wrote in a status update. "They also said they're going to look at how they can better help families who have lost loved ones."
Facebook has a strict privacy policy, which makes it hard for friends and family members to access the profiles of their deceased loved ones. In 2009, Facebook enacted a new "memorialising" process to make it easier for families to see the deceased's profile. Berlin's request reignited the debate within Facebook about what to do in these types of situations.
"This experience reinforced to us that there's more Facebook can do to help people celebrate and commemorate the lives of people they have lost," a spokeswoman from Facebook wrote in an email to the BBC.
The company is expected to issue a revised policy to allow loved ones more access to the profiles of their lost family members soon.
