The Facebook profile of a deceased family member is often a tricky thing. It’s a good memorial spot for friends and loved ones, but keeping the account open can cause unintentional pain, as the social media site might prompt you to invite the deceased to an event or remind you of their birthday. Now the company is making some changes to how it handles the accounts of users who have died.
Facebook on Tuesday announced a series of updates targeted at accounts of users who have passed away, including a new tribute section, additional controls for survivors overseeing those accounts and artificial intelligence updates to prevent sudden and potentially painful reminders of the deceased.
“These changes are the result of feedback we heard from people of different religions and cultural backgrounds as well as experts and academics,” wrote COO Sheryl Sandberg in a blog post. “We’re grateful to them for helping us understand how we can build more tools to help people find comfort in times of grief.”
The AI updates will prevent birthday reminders and suggestions to invite people who have passed away to an event, while the tribute section will act as a hub where friends and family can post stories, photos, videos and other remembrances, without clogging up the user’s original feed. People who want to reminisce will be able to scroll through that original feed separately.
Legacy controllers of those accounts (a 2015 feature that lets a friend or family member care for an account when the user passes away) will now have the ability to moderate posts, editing who can see them and adding and removing tags.
“This helps them manage content that might be hard for friends and family to see if they’re not ready,” said Sandberg.
Facebook pages can give family members additional insight into their loved ones, as Coins2Day’s own Don Reisinger discovered earlier this year. The pages are also convenient places for distant friends, who are unable to attend a funeral or memorial service, a place to express condolences and share memories.