Facebook will no longer suggest you wish your friend a happy birthday on the site after they’ve passed away.
The firm on Tuesday rolled out a slew of new features for memorialized accounts and, as part of the announcement, said it was beefing up its AI tools to prevent its site from surfacing painful reminders of deceased loved ones.
Memorialized accounts are user profiles whose owner has died, but are kept on the site in their memory.
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Facebook is launching new features for memorialized accounts and said it was beefing up its AI tools to prevent its site from surfacing painful reminders of deceased loved ones
Many friends and family members of users who have passed away choose to keep their Facebook profile active so that those who want to celebrate their life can do so by viewing and sharing photos or memories.
However, Facebook’s artificial intelligence technology is still being applied to these profiles long after the owner has died.
This has led to some inappropriate suggestions from its AI, including prompts to invite a deceased user to an event, or wishing them happy birthday.
Facebook said it’s working to prevent this by making some changes to its AI.
‘In addition to creating supportive tools, we also hope to minimize experiences that might be painful,’ Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a blog post.
‘…Once an account is memorialized, we use AI to help keep the profile from showing up in places that might cause distress, like recommending that person be invited to events or sending a birthday reminder to their friends.
‘We’re working to get better and faster at this,’ she added.
In addition, Facebook is rolling out a Tributes section that will separate posts made after the person has passed away from those made while they were still alive
In addition, Facebook is rolling out a Tributes section that will separate posts made after the person has passed away from those made while they were still alive.
Now, users can post memories and tributes in a separate part of their profile, ‘all while preserving the original timeline of their loved one,’ Sandberg said.
‘This lets people see the types of posts that are most helpful to them as they grieve and remember their loved ones,’ she added.
Also on Tuesday, Facebook rolled out more controls for managers of memorialized accounts, or legacy accounts.
It will give ‘legacy contacts,’ who the Facebook user assigned to take over their account, more say over content posted after the profile has been memorialized.
Facebook has begun rolling out the new Tributes section in some regions, though it hasn’t yet arrived to all users.
Memorialized profiles are created after Facebook has been notified of a user’s death, and can be managed afterward by a pre-determined person.
But, while they allow posts from others’ depending on the privacy settings, even the legacy contact can’t log in or read messages.
This would still be the case with the new feature, but will give legacy contacts more control over what shows up on the profile after a person’s death.
These users will be able to turn off timeline review for tribute posts, for example, or remove posts the deceased person has been tagged in.
As of now, legacy contacts can’t remove much content from a memorialized account.
Legacy contacts must be designated by the Facebook user before their death. Then, once a profile has been memorialized, this person can write pinned posts, update your profile and cover photo, or request the account be removed.
But for the most part, the memorialized profile will remain unchanged.
‘Once an account is memorialized, the content the person shared (example: photos, posts) remains on Facebook and is visible to the audience with whom it was shared,’ Facebook explains.
‘If the account holder chose a legacy contact, the legacy contact can control who can post tributes on the memorialized account and who can see those tributes.’
