Our Social Media When We Die

Have you ever wondered what happens to your social media after you die. I always thought that it just stayed on the Internet forever unless a family member decided to delete  it or if the type of social media was removed your account would just go with it. Turns out there are alternate ways to protect you identity after you die. For example, Facebook there is a legacy feature. According to Facebook the legacy feature means you can assign someone in settings as your legacy contact. Defined by Facebook a legacy contact is “someone you choose to look after your account if it is memorialized. If you choose to add a legacy contact, that person will be able to make decisions about your account once it is memorialized.” Some other things that your legacy contact will have access to do is accept or decline friend requests, choose who can post tributes, change your profile and cover pictures, and a few other things. With that there are also limits. Some limits include that they will not be able to fully log into your account, read your messages, or remove any of your existing friends. It is pretty simple to set up this feature. As stated in the article, first you have to go to settings and then choose memorialization settings, then press edit which is where you can choose your legacy contact. After all of that the person that you chose will will get an email about how the process works. There is also an option in the memorialization setting to delete your account after you pass away. Another app that has a similar feature is instagram which is owned by facebook. This app does not have the option to choose a legacy contact but you can personally leave instructions for your loved ones to delete or have you account memorialized.

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/what-happens-to-your-social-media-accounts-when-you-die

 

 

One thought on “Our Social Media When We Die

  1. This is a very interesting concept to me and I am interested in seeing how death on the internet will be trated in the future as more and more people have accounts that will outlive them. Will we eventually run out of space for all these dead accounts? What should the guidelines be for privacy and respect of the person that has passed? This reminds me of the artists Lil Peep and XXXTentacion, they passed away in 2017 and 2018 but their social media accounts have still been active. Personally I’ve seen a lot of backlash from fans about music being released posthumously, how their art is changed before it is released, and if the artist would agree with what’s happening if they were alive. Some claim the families are out to gain money from the artist’s passing and are discarding the integrity of their work. Sadly more and more celebrities and musicians seem to be passing away recently and I wonder if this treatment will continue to happen, if the way dead social media accounts are handled, or even if the social media platforms themselves will step in and establish guidelines/rules. Very Interesting!

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