Wong M Jane, the Internet persona who reverse engineers app to find out what updates they are working on, recently tweeted that Instagram is working on an update that would let the users memorialize an account of a deceased person.
Losing someone close is always hard, and it is imperative for some to keep the deceased person’s memory alive. Now in the time of online presence, most people are online, and the details of their lives are online with the kind of pictures they post or share. Other social media platforms such as Facebook already has the memorializing account feature. Now Instagram is walking in the same direction.
Some of the key features of memorialized accounts as described by Instagram are as follows:
- Instagram doesn’t allow anyone to log into a memorialized account.
- The profile of a memorialized account doesn’t appear differently from an account that hasn’t been memorialized.
- Posts the deceased person shared, including photos and videos, stay on Instagram and are visible to the audience they were shared with.
- Memorialized accounts don’t appear in public spaces, like people’s Explore section.
Once an account is memorialized, other users cannot make changes to the existing posts and info, including, photos or videos added by the person to their profile, comments on posts shared by the person to their profile, privacy settings of their profile, the current profile photo, followers or people the person follows.
Those who want to memoralise an account can request Instagram to do so.
If some of the posts and comments do not follow the Community Guidelines, the users can seek out Instagram’s helpdesk. They can also follow the standard procedure which is to report a post.
As tweeted by Wong M Jane, the memorializing update is up and live now.
