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For the people who are closest to someone who has passed away, the question of who now owns, controls, and has access to all this information is brought up. Even in our local region, situations like this are making news.
In Wayne County, a man whose wife passed away on Valentines day left him videos on her Facebook account for him to view after her death. Facebook's policy on so-called "memorialized" accounts is that no one is allowed access to them when they receive a valid request that the person has died; they can only be deleted by a family member's request. This poses a problem for situations just like the one in Wayne County. Should it really up to different social media sites how a deceased person's information is dealt with? What if the person left a video will on Facebook, and their spouse needed to view it to fulfill their loves one's final wishes?
Death is a very serious and personal issue, and in my opinion, should really be left to that person's spouse, or a close family member to deal with the still-living memories of that person on social media, not a giant internet company. Whether they choose to keep the accounts open and viewable to friends to post farewell wishes, or view private videos and photos before deleting the account, it should be up to them. If a universal law or rights for this new situation is passed, many difficult situations of ownership of content on social media can be solved.
To view the story posted on February 23, 2014 visit: http://bit.ly/1o48rU1
I completely agree that the spouse/family should be able to deal with their loved ones social media account. Its interesting that I never really thought about what happens to all these accounts after people pass until reading your blog. I just automatically assumed that the spouse/family had the rights to their account and could either keep it or delete it. I feel that Facebook may be trying to keep the account safe by limiting access to it. However, if it is evident that the people trying to access the account are related to the deceased person then they should have the right to do with it what they find fit.
ReplyDeleteI agree as well, the family members of the deceased should have first rights to that persons Facebook page. I can kind of see why Facebook would want to protect these kinds of pages. One reason could be that they want to keep people from posting inappropriate or nasty comments to the page. However, a family member isn’t going to do this, and they should be able to decide what to do with it, if for no other reason than to be able to take the photos off of the page for safe keeping. I feel like pretty soon, people are going to have to specify who gets the rights to their Facebook page in their will. However, like you said, what if a deceased family member left a video of their will on their Facebook? I would be interested to see how this issue is resolved.
ReplyDeleteIt'll be interesting to see how this will work it's way in to people's last will's and testaments, giving spouses and family access to their accounts. I wonder how the legality of that type of document versus company policies will interact. I like the idea of people being able to view my social pages after my death.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think the family should have access to their loved ones social media accounts. Maybe social media should have something set up that gives the family access incase something such as a death occurs.
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