14 DAY TRIAL // It took a while, but Facebook has finally come up with a way to do something for those members of its platform that have passed away.
Most likely triggered by John Berlin’s desire to see his son’s Look Back video, Facebook has decided to introduce a new way for the accounts of those who have passed away to be viewed, by changing the visibility set to these.
So, from now on, Facebook pages can be preserved as digital legacies and public memorial places.
According to the social network, when people “memorialize” the profiles of family members and friends who have died, the visibility of those profiles will be kept the way the owner had it set, ultimately respecting their wishes.
“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,” reads a blog post from the company.
More changes were to come, Facebook said, but it may take a while before these are available.
“We will have more to share in the coming months as we continue to think through how best to help people decide how they want to be remembered and what they want to leave behind for loved ones,” Facebook’s community operations team wrote.
As mentioned, back when John Berlin asked Facebook to allow him to view his son’s video he was met with silence in the first phase. Then, when a video he made went viral on YouTube, Facebook reacted and Berlin even got a phone call from Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Of course, he’s not the only grieving member of Facebook, but his efforts got the social network to take on this new project.