Family members or friends of deceased Facebook account holders can request the social network to memorialize the account of their loved one. In response, Facebook restricts the visibility of such accounts to friends-only, but this policy has now changed.
Facebook has announced that it will no longer limit visibility of a deceased member's account to the individual's circle of friends but respect the last settings of the user.
"...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 stated in a blog post.
"Over the past several months, we've been thinking about and working on better ways for people to remember loved ones. Based on conversations inspired by these questions, we've decided to make an important change to how we preserve legacies on Facebook," it added.
Likewise friends and family members can request for the Look Back video of their loved ones who passed away. The "Look Back" video feature was launched by the company on the tenth anniversary of Facebook. This move was inspired by a father from Missouri, John Berlin, whose son died in 2012. Berlin created a video of his request and uploaded it on YouTube. The emotional appeal went viral and with the help of local media, Facebook was convinced that the wish of the grieving father should be granted.
"We had not initially made the videos for memorialized accounts, but John's request touched the hearts of everyone who heard it, including ours," stated Facebook.
Just like Berlin, majority of families who needs to deal with the passing away of a loved one, has the trouble of accessing the deceased member's account especially when they do not know the password. From Facebook's end, it is also not easy to just give in to such requests because of strict rules on user privacy.
These latest moves of Facebook is part of a bigger picture in the age of social media. Virtual memories getting immortalized, every bit, every byte. The company said that users can expect more improvements in the coming months with regard to decisions on how one should be remembered through their Facebook profiles.
Facebook is already a part of today's reality. It can be a big part of an individual's life and it can touch hearts of people who are celebrating or bereaving. Earlier this month, a mother of a boy with Asperger's syndrome that isolates him from society set up a birthday surprise. Through Facebook, the mother found two million friends for her son.
