News

Actions

Facebook grants father access to dead son’s ‘Lookback’ video

Posted at 9:08 PM, Feb 05, 2014
and last updated 2014-02-06 08:01:31-05

NEW YORK (PIX11) – Most of the internet collectively gasped in excitement to relive their biggest Facebook moments through a Lookback video created by the social networking site on its tenth anniversary

Well, most everyone was excited. Certainly John Berlin, of St. Louis,Missouri, who lost his son on January 28, 2012, was not.

His son Jesse Berlin was 22 when he died and his dad didn’t have access to his son’s profile.

The mourning father uploaded a video to YouTube this week, making a plea to Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team to gain access to his son’s profile. The video went viral on Reddit and CBS 6 affiliate PIX11 News helped connect the father and Facebook.

In a short video titled “My appeal to Facebook,” John Berlin fights back tears as he explains why he is sharing the video.

“You ever do something crazy because you just don’t know what to do anymore?” he asks. “Well that’s what I’m doing right now.”

“I’m calling out to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. You’ve been putting out these new movies – these one minute movies that everyone has been sharing, and I think they’re great,” Berlin said, referring to the short, personalized videos the social networking site has generated for millions of its users.

Facebook told PIX11that they had been looking to contact Berlin and wanted to make the video happen. After the news station helped connect them, Facebook contacted Berlin and said “his wishes were being granted.”

“The video will be ready either tonight or tomorrow morning,” Facebook spokesman Jonathan Thaw told PIX11 News.

The 62-second “look back” video notes the year you joined Facebook, then shows a handful of your most-liked posts and a seemingly random selection of your photos — all set to instrumental music. To see yours, go to Facebook.com/lookback.

Read more, including a personal interview with John Berlin, on WPIX11