Facebook now lets you control what will happen to your profile when you die
Mashable reported that Facebook is giving users control over what happens to their accounts when they die.
The social network rolled out a new feature Thursday that allows users to designate a specific friend who will be able to access their account after they die.
The feature, called legacy contact, appears in Facebook’s security settings menu. There, you can select a specific Facebook friend who will be able to control certain aspects of your page, like your profile and header image, after you die. Alternatively, users can opt to have their account deleted after they pass away.
The social network already has a memorialization system in place where people can let Facebook know a user has passed away. Once Facebook verifies that person has died — typically through an obituary or news article — the account becomes memorialized. Memorialized accounts don’t surface in friend suggestions, ads or other “public” places on Facebook.
With the legacy contact feature, Facebook is taking the memorialization process a step further. After an account becomes memorialized, a legacy contact is able to pin posts to the top of a page, respond to incoming friend requests and control the profile and header image on an account. Additionally, they can download an archive of the user’s photos and other posts, if given permission by the original account holder. Legacy contacts can’t view messages or change other account settings.
Facebook is also making changes to the appearance of these memorialized accounts, which will now have a “remembering” label before the name to let others know it’s an account of someone who has since passed away.
The Wall Street Journal says that being a legacy contact is different from simply logging into the account of the deceased, and there are important things legacy contacts can’t alter. They can’t edit what the deceased has already posted, or what his or her friends post on the page. If you chose to post a photo while you are living that looks embarrassing when you are gone, your legacy contact can’t do anything about it. A legacy contact also can’t decide to delete a whole account. These restrictions might upset some people who think their job as a caretaker is to maintain a Facebook page as the nicest possible memorial. “We gave this a lot of thought, and ultimately decided against it for this first version,” said spokeswoman Jodi Seth. Facebook feared that curation responsibilities might add an extra emotional load to grieving, among other concerns.
Article originally from mashable.com and wsj.com
Images from facebook.com
Thumbnail from shutterstock.com
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