How and when you will die facebook

What happens to my Facebook account if I pass away

You can choose to either appoint a legacy contact to look after your memorialized account or have your account permanently deleted from Facebook.

If you don't choose to have your account permanently deleted, it will be memorialized if we become aware of your passing.

Memorialized accounts

Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorialized accounts have the following key features:

The word Remembering will be shown next to the person's name on their profile.

Depending on the privacy settings of the account, friends can share memories on the memorialized timeline.

Content the person shared (example: photos, posts) stays on Facebook and is visible on Facebook to the audience it was shared with.

Memorialized profiles don't appear in public spaces such as in suggestions for People You May Know, ads or birthday reminders.

No one can log into a memorialized account.

Memorialized accounts that don't have a legacy contact can't be changed.

Pages with a sole admin whose account was memorialized will be removed from Facebook if we receive a valid memorialization request.

Legacy contacts

A legacy contact is someone you choose to look after your account if it's memorialized. We strongly suggest setting a legacy contact so your account can be managed once it's memorialized.

A legacy contact can accept friend requests on behalf of a memorialized account, pin a tribute post to the profile and change the profile picture and cover photo. If the memorialized account has an area for tributes, a legacy contact will be able to decide who can see and who can post tributes.

Learn more about what legacy contacts can do and how to add a legacy contact to your account.

Deleting your account when you pass away

You can choose to have your account permanently deleted should you pass away. This means that when someone lets us know that you’ve passed away, all of your messages, photos, posts, comments, reactions and info will be immediately and permanently removed from Facebook.

To request that your account be deleted:

Tap in the top right of Facebook.

Scroll down and tap Settings.

Scroll down to Your Facebook Information and tap Account Ownership and Control.

Tap Memorialization Settings.

Tap Delete Account After Death, select Yes, Delete After Death and tap Save.

Since it can be painful for family and friends not to be able to visit your profile, you’ll have the option to let a friend know about your decision. If you’d like to message a friend, tap Choose a Friend.

Enter a friend’s name in the search box, then tap Send.

Note: If you have a legacy contact and want to request that your account be deleted after you pass away, you'll need to remove your legacy contact by tapping Remove under their name.

For friends and family

If you'd like to create another place for people on Facebook to share memories of your loved one, we suggest creating a group.

Learn how to request the memorialization of an account or how to request the removal of a deceased person's account from Facebook.

What happens to your Facebook account when you die and can you do something about it when you are alive?

Your legacy contact cannot log into your Facebook account, change your past posts or read your messages.

By Shweta Ganjoo: Life is uncertain. But your life on social media is not. Or at least doesn't have to be. May be your friend will forget your birthday. But Facebook will not. May be you will move to a new city, leaving behind some memories in your old city. But Facebook will remember them all. And maybe one day the inevitable will happen, you will die, but not on Facebook where your friends, who don't know what happened to you, will probably keep pinging you, believing that you are upset with them and hence not replying, or Facebook will ping your friends reminding them of your birthday.

Now, these are the vexing issues that Facebook has tried to deal with. After all, it is used by over 2 billion people, and the matter of a user dying is something Facebook engineers and product managers have thought about. So, they have come up with a few solutions.

More often than not, people share a large part of their lives on Facebook, which makes it their digital abode. And when they pass away, it's essential that that digital abode is safely preserved. Facebook, unlike other social media platform including Twitter and Instagram, gives users an option to either delete or keep the account of their deceased relative in event of a death.

This happens via Facebook Memorialized Account, a feature that allows family and friends to share photos and messages on the deceased person's timeline long after he or she is gone.

What is a Memorialized Account and how does it work?

A memorialized account on Facebook is a place where friends and family members can gather to share messages and memories on the timeline of the deceased person. Such accounts don't appear in public searches and they have the word "Remembering" shown next to the person's name in their profile.

As per Facebook's guidelines, no one can log into memorialized accounts. But if you have appointed a "legacy contact", they can manage your account after it has been memorialized. This includes writing pinned posts, responding to friend requests, update your profile and cover photos or request for the removal of your account. Your legacy contact, however, cannot log into your account, change your past posts or read your messages.

But what if I don't want my account to be memorialized?

If you don't want your account to no longer exist on Facebook, you can choose to have your account, including all your posts and photos be permanently deleted. This means that Facebook would remove your account and delete all your data when someone notifies the social media company of your passing away.

How do I manage what happens to my Facebook account after I die?

As mentioned before, Facebook gives you two options - either to memorialize your account or delete your account permanently - in case of an eventuality. You can select one of the two options by going to the Manage Account option under the General Account Settings option.

If you choose to appoint a legacy contact, the person will get a message from Facebook, explaining what being a legacy contact means. They won't be notified again until your account is memorialized. Alternatively, if you choose to delete your account, it will happen only when someone will notify the Facebook of your death.

How do I request memorialization of a friend's account?

Facebook's Help Centre has a special section where it allows users to send memorialization requests. Users can add a name of their friend along with the date of the person's death and documentation that confirms it. Facebook's team will then review the request and memorialize the account when details have been verified.

How do I request deletion of a friend's account?

Alternatively, if you don't want a friend's account active after their demise, you can send a special request to Facebook along with the necessary documentation that would confirm the person's identity on Facebook along with his or her demise. Facebook will then delete the account when it has verified all the details.

Notably, Facebook memorializes all accounts once the user has been reported to be deceased. However, if you have neither appointed a legacy contact nor someone has informed Facebook of your death, your account will remain active and your friends will be able to post content on your timeline (depending on your settings) as usual.

Why Facebook will never die

Brian Lufkin
BBC Capital

June 9, 2018

Image copyright Getty Images

Despite all the recent scandals of fake news and misuse of users' personal data, it is very doubtful that the future of this social network is threatened. Why?

In 2004, I was just starting out at Indiana University when I first heard about a new website for people my age.

Before the start of the new semester, I remember chatting with friends on AOL messenger (does anyone remember this one?) in my dorm room.

"Have you heard about Facebook?" they asked me. "Be sure to register there. It's a new site for students."

Fast-forward to April 2018: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress and answers questions in an attempt to convince lawmakers that his social network, originally created for communication of students, is currently not a threat the stability of Western democracy and does not treat users' personal information with disdain.

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In a congressional hearing, Zuckerberg admitted that his company is not doing enough to prevent the spread of fake news, foreign government interference in elections and the leakage of personal data.

As you may remember, in March of this year it was revealed that political advertising firm Cambridge Analytica had accessed the data of almost 87 million users of the world's largest social network - without their consent.

The scandal that broke out shook Facebook to its foundations and forced its founder to reconsider how the business is run.

In the final round of his "grand apology tour", Zuckerberg appeared before the European Parliament and answered even tougher questions - Europe intends to pass new laws regarding the storage of personal data, some of the most stringent in the world.

Image copyright, iStock

Image caption,

For better or worse, Facebook fulfills some of our most basic human needs

14 years ago my friends and I used Facebook to make new friends and share photos from yesterday's party .

The evolution of this social network took place before my eyes - in front of one of the first few thousand Facebook users, and what it has become and how it is done is both exciting and disturbing.

How did a simple university network grow into such a monster? How did it manage to survive and thrive when competitors (such as MySpace) failed?

Why, despite the ongoing scandals and constant changes in the interface, users do not leave Facebook?

And the most important question that does not let me go: is there something that will stop the growth of this social network in the future? Increasingly, I'm coming to the conclusion that no.

What happened to MySpace and Friendster

Facebook owes much of its meteoric rise to popularity to being in the right place at the right time.

"That's why Friendster failed because it wasn't the right time," says Bernie Hogan, a researcher at the Oxford Institute for Internet Studies.

Image copyright, Getty Images

Image caption

Friendster and MySpace paved the way for Facebook's worldwide popularity, but they themselves failed to achieve a fraction of that success

At the very beginning of the 21st century, there were simply no developments that now help Facebook to function smoothly.

But by 2004, the speed of the Internet connection has increased, coding (the basis of all websites) has reached a new level.

The purely technical limitations that prevented the full development of such "early" social networks as Friendster and Friends Reunited were largely overcome by the time they entered the Facebook arena.

But those sites cleared the way for Facebook at a time when many people were simply afraid to reveal too much about themselves online.

In the 1990s, Internet users were even warned not to give their real names online. Now, words like "selfie" have officially entered the Oxford English Dictionary.

Why social media knows more about you than friends and family

Speaking of Friendster and MySpace, Tim Huang, director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Program for Ethics and Governance at the non-profit Society of the Future, emphasizes that these websites have taught society not to be afraid of social networks.

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By the mid-2000s, Facebook could afford to hire talented engineers from Silicon Valley, which helped build the site's infrastructure to handle the rapidly growing number of users.

Your friend feed didn't learn to take care of itself, launching it required developers to create algorithms that help select the most interesting and valuable updates from your friends' feeds.

However, Huang also points to another major factor that played into the hands of Facebook and led to its global dominance - mobile phones.

In many developing countries, people access the Internet only with cheap mobile phones. And for them, "Facebook" actually represents the entire Internet.

"We shouldn't underestimate the power of mobile phones," says Huang. "They've made social media pervasive. Now social media is always with you, in your pocket, making it an effective platform for news and communication. In a time when the Internet you could only exit from the computer on the table, it all worked much slower."

The Nine Lives of Facebook

As Facebook conquered the world, so did the number of predictions of its imminent death.

One 2014 study from Princeton University predicted that between 2015 and 2017 Facebook will lose 80% of its most active users.

And this was predicted long before the scandal with Cambridge Analytica, which so tarnished the reputation of the social network.

So how is Facebook able to achieve in its business what could be called the equivalent of a cat's nine lives?

To begin with, we note that it has become so rooted in the digital ecosystem of the 21st century that it is now extremely difficult to isolate it from there.

Oxford's Bernie Hogan calls this concept "interoperability," which is when you use your Facebook login to log into other sites and use their services.

"Just today, in order to buy concert tickets, I entered my Facebook login. I don't use Facebook now, but I had to remember my login. De facto, Facebook becomes the provider of your Internet identity."

Image copyright, Getty Images

Image caption,

Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress in Washington. Personal data of 87 million Facebook users leaked to firm linked to Trump campaign

In addition, as psychologists point out, Facebook satisfies a number of basic human needs.

And no matter how social movements like #DeleteFacebook urge people to stop using it, no matter how alarming the identity abuse scandals are, people just can't stop using it.

"Almost everyone is coming back," says Catalina Thoma, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. "Social networking sites exploit what makes us human: we like to connect with others."

But there are also very specific benefits of using social media.

"A lot of research shows that the more people use Facebook, the more social capital they acquire - this is what we call connecting with other people," says Toma. "There is emotional support, and asking for advice, and asking recommend something.

All this makes people come back here again and again, despite the fact that sometimes they find out from Facebook that someone lives much better or more interesting than themselves.

"They feel bad about it, but they still can't stop," comments Toma.

For many Facebook users, its pros outweigh the cons: it can help you find old friends, find new jobs, expand your business. So for the sake of this, you can endure all the cons.

Even in the immediate aftermath of the scandal that was making headlines around the world, the site's user base didn't shrink as much as one might expect.

Hogan points out the conflicting nature of the relationship between Facebook and your personal information. As long as we love having the internet at our fingertips, legitimate entities like Facebook will inevitably influence our lives.

“The companies behind social media will always seek to exploit you for their own enrichment,” Hogan points out. “They don’t hide it. That’s what Zuckerberg said in Congress: “How do you make money?

Image copyright, Getty Images

Image caption,

In the right place at the right time: Facebook's rise was fueled by low-cost mobile devices connected to the Internet

Rest in peace, Facebook?

But even after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and Zuckerberg's apology to 87 million users whose personal data was used without their consent, this social network continues to thrive and grow.

Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University and author of The Big Four on the power of the world's four tech companies, says, "Facebook's business will continue to grow. Where do consumers go when they need to vent their anger? Facebook and Instagram. And advertisers have no other choice either - Facebook has 2.2 billion monthly active users."

However, this may change if advertiser dollars follow the younger generation of users leaving the platform.

This is another oft-cited reason for Facebook's decline: the exodus of Generation Z - those who are now roughly 22 years old and younger.

They like to exchange instant messages that disappear automatically - instant messengers like Snapchat do this.

They don't want to post everything about themselves on Facebook because their parents are there.

Research firm eMarketer predicted in February that the number of young Facebook users will continue to plummet.

2.8 million Americans aged 25 and under quit Facebook last year, and more are expected to leave the social network in 2018.

However, with regard to older generations, including older users, everything is stable.

Image copyright, iStock

Image caption,

Could anything make us use Facebook more responsibly? Or do we need government intervention?

The future of this site will really depend on what the world's governments decide to do about Facebook's growing influence (or do nothing).

"I don't think the question is what will kill Facebook," says MIT professor Sherry Turkle. "I think it comes down to this: what will make people use Facebook more responsibly?" .

"We understood something about him before, but we tried to drive these thoughts away from ourselves. Now it won't work anymore."

Indeed, we now know too much about the dangers of both identity leaks and fake news.

"There is already a consumer movement demanding more acceptable parameters. People are demanding control over how Facebook uses their data. They only post on Facebook what they really want to share."

The situation is aggravated by the fact that Facebook is a monopoly in most countries. ( According to data series (May 2017), in Russia, in terms of the number of active authors, VKontakte is the leader - 25,722,000., Instagram is in second place - 7,143,000., and Facebook is only in third - 1953,000. According to another study (2018), among the Russians surveyed, 63% said they use YouTube, 61% - VKontakte. About "Facebook" remembered 35% of respondents, about "Odnoklassniki" - 42%. - Approx. translator. )

"Facebook's sheer size and financial capabilities mean it can either buy any competitor or successfully stifle it," says Galloway, citing the examples of WhatsApp and Instagram that were eventually acquired by Facebook. .

Nowadays Facebook is so ingrained in our daily life that it is hard to imagine how to get rid of it.

"Most likely, something else will happen: people will begin to understand that both the economy and the markets will only benefit if there are many smaller firms instead of one huge monopolist - this stimulates innovation and creates new jobs," Galloway emphasizes.

According to experts, such an outcome is more likely than the sudden collapse and complete disappearance of Facebook from the face of the earth.

But for that to happen, governments must come up with new rules to limit Facebook's power.

While this social network satisfies our needs for human interaction, its sheer size, huge user base and extraordinary resilience require public scrutiny and scrutiny - as Europe has begun to do.

"We need another boxer in the ring - someone who will fight for the interests of the people," says Hogan.

Read the original English version of this article at BBC Capital.

What will happen to your Facebook when you die?

We spend a lot of time in social networks: we share photos and impressions, communicate with friends and colleagues, like and repost their posts. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are turning into memory diaries of sorts. And what will happen to them after the death of the owner? Stella McKenna tried to figure it out and published an article on Medium. We have chosen the most important.

One evening I went into my Facebook account settings to see if I could register multiple profiles for the same email (I wanted "regular" and "professional"), but got sidetracked by a strange item in "Account Management". There is a description next to it: "Change your guardian settings or deactivate your account." I did not know what this function was, and I became interested.
It turns out in Facebook you can choose what happens to your account when you die. Facebook, thanks for reminding me of death!

Do I want a memorial page after death? Do I want friends and family to continue to post on my wall, share memories and grieve together? Or do I want my page to be removed? How does Facebook even know that I'm dead?

I immediately had so many questions that I had never thought about. I don’t even have a will, but still I thought about how I want to dispose of my Facebook account after my death. I closed my browser in shock. On the other hand, it is also part of our life. When a person dies, they need to be taken care of: an obituary, a funeral, an inheritance, social media.

What happens to your account when you die

Facebook has a page that tells you what you can do with your account when you die. I'm a little worried about the fact that Facebook doesn't use the words "death" or "die" - they write "won't" instead. I guess it's a softer term, but somehow it also seems colder.
If you choose to delete the page after death, friends or family will need to contact Facebook and notify the administration that you have died. There is another handy page for this. Relatives will need to send Facebook a copy of the death certificate or other document (will, obituary or memorial card), after which your page will be deleted.
If during your lifetime you choose an “account keeper” for yourself, the page will receive a memorable status, and the “keeper” will be able to post memories from your page.

An item in the Facebook settings where you can choose what to do with the account after death

I'm not sure if I want my profile to be deleted after my death. Bye. But don't you think that the page keeper is a little strange? For example, it seems to me.
I wonder if memorable accounts ever get deleted? What if I die first and then all my friends and family? At some point, will we all just be digital monuments on Facebook? This is so sad. I don't want to exist as a memorial page. I don’t want people to write sad posts or dedicate publications to the anniversary of my death.

I prefer my loved ones to mourn for me in a more old-fashioned way. For example, they scattered my ashes somewhere in nature and read poetry at the same time. I want them to keep my photos in albums, tell old stories at family dinners, remember my laughter.

I don't want my family to be able to scroll back to 2008 and see me complaining about the weather or the memes I posted. None of this matters.

What about Twitter? Instagram? gmail? Twitter allows loved ones to ask to disable an account. You can delete your Instagram account or get a memorable status too. Gmail allows you to assign an "inactive account manager". You can also allow your family to use your account after you die.

Why posting baby photos is a bad idea

An equally important topic is the birth of a child. Here almost everything is as strange as in the case of death. Let's not touch on the topic of posts about pregnancy, the birth of children and photos where you can see how they grow up. Much more important is the age at which a child can start a page on social networks. It is clear that not from the cradle, but when?
I'm so glad social media wasn't so popular when I was in college. When I was in high school, there was MySpace, but nobody used it as much as Facebook does now. And no one posted baby pictures on MySpace either.
Looks like pictures of today's kids will be available all over the internet before they're old enough to know about Facebook. Parents post photos of their children without their consent. What's stopping a future employer from one day putting their name on Google and finding baby pictures? Or even worse: awkward teenage photos that make you want to sink through the ground?

The whole life of a person, from birth to death and the perpetuation of his memory, will soon be on Facebook.

I am not a mother, so I do not consider myself entitled to tell how to raise children. But if I ever have them, I will not post their pictures on social networks. Something in this world must remain private. I think it's death and baby photos.
If you are suddenly interested in the answer to my original question - yes and no. You can't have two Facebook profiles on the same email, but you can create a second account on a different email if you want a personal and a professional page.
This adds another option in case of death. I may want to delete my personal account, but I will keep the memory of myself in the professional one.