Facebook Changes Memorialized Accounts to Give Users Greater Control

3D Facebook logo posted by jomblo3
on February 26, 2014 at HDWalling
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Facebook recently announced changes that will give its users more control over Facebook accounts after death.  Facebook will discontinue its practice of restricting access to the account by altering the privacy settings of a memorialized account. In the announcement, members of Facebook’s Community Operations team explained:

Up to now, when a person’s account was memorialized, we restricted its visibility to friends-only. This meant that people could no longer see the account or any of its content unless they were Facebook friends with the person who passed away. Starting today, we will maintain the visibility of a person’s content as-is. This will allow people to see memorialized profiles in a manner consistent with the deceased person’s expectations of privacy. We are respecting the choices a person made in life while giving their extended community of family and friends ongoing visibility to the same content they could always see.

Facebook is also now permitting anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one to access that person’s “Look Back” video. In recognition of Facebook's ten-year anniversary, Facebook created personal movies for people using posts and photos shared over the years. Facebook now offers this video on all memorialized accounts to the  friends of the deceased user. 

Facebook explained the genesis of these changes:

For one man in Missouri, the Look Back video he was most desperate to watch was one that had not yet been made. John Berlin reached out to ask if it was possible for Facebook to create a video for his son, Jesse, who passed away in 2012. We had not initially made the videos for memorialized accounts, but John’s request touched the hearts of everyone who heard it, including ours. Since then, many others have asked us to share the Look Back videos of their loved ones, too, and we’re now glad to be able to fulfill those requests.

Loved ones can now request the video using an online application.  The video is not, however, transferable, and the link to the video apparently cannot be shared.  Regardless, the video may provide loved ones of deceased Facebook account holders comforting access to the departed user's photos, pictures, and timeline posts.

Evan Carroll, writing for The Digital Beyond, welcomed the changes. Noting that the most recent is Facebook’s second major announcement about how accounts are handled after death, he concluded:

...it is their first step to allow users control over the process.  [t]ogether these announcements indicate a trend towards greater control of the process by users.  At the Digital Beyond, we advocate primarily for individuals to have control of what happens to their digital assets following death, and in the absence of instructions, for access to be granted to an executor with a fiduciary responsibility to make decisions in the best interest of the deceased. We believe Facebook’s announcement, while limited in scope, is in-line with our stance and is a step in the right direction, therefore we applaud their efforts.

In a subsequent article, Mr. Carroll predicted future changes coming from Facebook.  To read his predictions, click here.