Two years ago Donnelyn Curtis, a librarian at the University of Nevada set up profiles for Joe McDonald (deceased 1971) and his wife Leola Lewis and now after using the accounts for educational purposes they have been shut down by Facebook.
Curtis hadn’t really started to update the accounts until recently when the account went from approximately 100 followers who were mostly friends to over 1,000 people.
According to Curtis when she logged in recently she was met with an automated message from Facebook explaining that creating an account for someone other than herself violated the social networks terms of service.
It’s a pretty common theme for Facebook to kill accounts that don’t appear to be real, however the fact that it took the social network two years to kill off the account is surprising.
In the meantime Curtis doesn’t seem as upset about the account being closed as the fact that Facebook gave her no warning regarding their decision.
The account was also popular, having been featured on Mashable, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Yahoo! News and the UK’s Daily Mail.
And while the account was obviously not her own facts from both Lewis and McDonald were historically accurate with photos and events being posted from school sponsored “hop” dances” and “Rugby Football matches.”
In any event Curtis wishes Facebook would allow her to convert the historical figures into pages on Facebook.
Curtis is now waiting for Facebook to respond to her request for a profile to page conversion so she can continue the project.
