With the COVID-19 death toll on the rise globally, there is a rising need to highlight social media accounts that are no longer active. Acco...
With the COVID-19 death toll on the rise globally, there is a rising need to highlight social media accounts that are no longer active. Accounts of people who have deceased need to be highlighted. Instagram is working on something on these lines. The popular social network owned by Facebook is reportedly planning to launch an account memorialisation feature on its platform.
The feature was first spotted by Hong Kong-based hacker, Jane Manchun Wong, who shared an image of how the feature will look in practice on Twitter. Instagram will add a ‘Remembering’ banner right below the profile picture, and above the account name.
Instagram was reportedly working on this feature for quite some time now, and the process was hastened after the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We’ve been working on these updates for some time, though this is one — among others — that we’ve accelerated in light of COVID-19 to help support our community during a difficult time,” Instagram was quoted saying in a Buzzfeed article.
Upon opening a profile of a deceased user, Instagram will show a pop-up with the text - “This account has been memorialized. Memorialized accounts are a place to remember and celebrate someone’s life after they’ve passed away.”
Instagram’s Help Section has also been updated to reflect the account memorialisation feature. The help section explains that memorialised accounts will look the same as it did before, and will only appear to audiences who already follow the account. Nobody else will be allowed to log into a memorialised account or make changes to the photos or videos uploaded on the account.
Later, Instagram’s communications account on Twitter also acknowledged the existence of the feature in a reply to Jane’s Tweet.
“Yes, we’re making changes to help people identify if an Instagram account belongs to someone who has passed away. We’ll have more to share on this at a later time,” the tweet read.
Instagram is working on account memorialization disclaimer: I’m not actually dead, only in the inside pic.twitter.com/DVIDLLwTAk
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 20, 2020
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