Facebook is giving its users control over what happens to their accounts when they die.
The social networking site rolled out this new feature today, that allows facebook.com users to designate a specific friend who will be able to access their account after they die.
The feature, termed as legacy contact, appears in the security settings menu. There, one can select a specific Facebook friend who will be able to control certain aspects of one's page, like your profile and header image, after you die. Alternatively, users can also 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 the designated Facebook Team verifies that the person has officialy died — typically through an newspaper obituary or a specific news article — the account becomes 'memorialized'. Memorialized accounts don't surface in friend suggestions, ads or other "public" places on Facebook, which of course is something good!
With the legacy-contact feature, Facebook is taking the memorialization process one 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.
Additionally, they can download an archive of the user's photos and other posts, if given the permission to do so, by the original account holder. Legacy contacts won't be able to view any messages or change any other account settings.
Facebook is also making changes to the page 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 passed away.
The goal, according to the Facebook product manager: Vanessa Callison-Burch, is to make it more which accounts have been memorialized and provide a simple way for friends and family to manage their loved one's accounts.
"Family members will tell us 'I really want to communicate information about the memorial service with this person's friends'. The idea of a 'pinned' post comes from there, states Callison-Burch. "People typically don't think about this very much until they have an experience of loss."
The legacy-contact setting is available to facebook users in the United States as of now & will eventually roll out in more countries, though the specific timings are unclear.
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