Facebook Adds Tributes Section for Accounts of Deceased Users

• Facebook is updating how users can pay their respects to the accounts of deceased users with a new Tributes feature.
• Users can now access a separate Tributes section to share memories, post stories or commemorate birthdays.
• The Tributes feed will can be moderated by legacy accounts and immediate family members of the memorialized accounts.

There is no way to fully access the Facebook account of a person once its owner dies. However, the social media platform has a feature in place that sets the status of such accounts to “memorialized.” The request can be made only by family members, who are required to fill the Special Request for Deceased Person’s Account form on the platform. Upon verification legacy accounts and immediate family members are granted moderation access.

Memorialized accounts allowed other users to post on the timelines of deceased users, but the feature is getting a major change. Facebook recently updated a Help page to introduce its ‘Tributes’ feature which changes how users interact with memorialized accounts. Once the feature goes live for an account, a separate Tributes section will be added to memorialized accounts. All new posts will be directed to the Tributes section.

Image Courtesy of Facebook

Facebook has described the Tributes section as a space on memorialized profiles where friends and family can post stories, commemorate a birthday, share memories and more. Legacy accounts will continue to have the same moderation rights over Tributes similar to how it worked before with feeds of memorialized accounts. Moderation rights include adding or removing tags, editing post visibility and post deletion.

Facebook revealed that despite the changes, legacy users would not be able to login to the accounts of the deceased, access personal messages or add and remove friends. While some users might not be comfortable with the feature, it is better than letting accounts of deceased users being completely unmoderated. The new feature is not available to all users and regions just yet. Facebook said that it is working on releasing the new feature to all users as soon as possible.

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