Facebook has made a key change to its privacy policy to honour the wishes of deceased users.
Traditionally, Facebook has restricted the visibility of dead users' accounts to 'friends-only', regardless of the user's privacy settings when they were alive. A Facebook blog post has revealed that this is about to change.
"Up to now, when a person's account was memorialised," the post says, "we restricted its visibility to friends-only. This meant that people could no longer see the account or any of its content unless they were Facebook friends with the person who passed away.
"Starting today, we will maintain the visibility of a person's content as-is. This will allow people to see memorialised profiles in a manner consistent with the deceased person's expectations of privacy. We are respecting the choices a person made in life while giving their extended community of family and friends ongoing visibility to the same content they could always see."
In keeping with this change in policy, Facebook also announced it is offering a way for loved ones of deceased users to view their 'Look Back' videos (the personalised clips your Facebook friends flooded your news feeds with to celebrate the company's 10th anniversary).
A Missouri man named John Berlin went viral when he asked Facebook if he could view the clip created for his son, Jesse, who died in 2012.
{youtube}vPT28MGhprY{/youtube}
"John's request touched the hearts of everyone who heard it, including ours," the Facebook blog post says. "Since then, many others have asked us to share the 'Look Back' videos of their loved ones, too, and we're not glad to be able to fulfill those requests.
"Changes like this are part of a larger, ongoing effort to help people when they face difficult challenges like bereavement on Facebook. We will have more to share in the coming months as we continue to think through how best to help people decide how they want to be remembered and what they want to leave behind for loved ones."
You can request to see a deceased user's 'Look Back' video here.
