What happens to your social media account in its afterlife?

Marija Milisavljević and her first husband got married in 2013. (Supplied: Marija Milisavljević) Link copiedShareShare articleIt's been five years since Marija Milisavljević lost the person she says could "light up a room". Her husband of eight years died from leukaemia in 2021. "I miss everything about him, I miss his presence … just the comfort of having my person in the room," she said. Like any grieving loved one, Ms Milisavljević tried to salvage mementos that were left behind. One of those things happened to be a Facebook account. Ms Milisavljević said she attempted to memorialise the now inactive social media account, but her applications to do so never saw the light of day. Memorialising an account involves declaring that an account user has died, to preserve or close down the account entirely. How often do people think about their social media afterlife? According to Bjørn Nansen, an associate professor in the school of computing and information systems at the University of Melbourne, not often enough. In a memorialised Facebook account, a "remembering" banner is added to a person's profile. (ABC News: Gabriela Rahardja) "It still remains a pretty marginal thing," he said. Dr Nansen said one of the main risks of not managing a digital legacy prior to death was inaccessibility. That means losing traces of a person's online identity. Those virtual assets could hold sentimental or even monetary value including videos on social media, cryptocurrencies, email or chat threads, website domains or music playlists. For Ms Milisavljević it's all sentimental but important, nevertheless. Dr Nansen said managing one's digital asset should be considered "life admin". "But then obviously it also touches on death, which people don't want to think about — their own demise." Bjørn Nansen says people need to start thinking about what will happen to their digital assets after they die. (Supplied: Bjørn Nansen) It's a sentiment shared by wills and estate lawyer Lisa Berte, who said the lack of awareness could create issues for people close to the deceased. "People aren't quite aware that these issues can become an issue once you pass away," Ms Berte said. "We're not really focused so much on our social media as being something of worth, of monetary value. "So, we don't really turn our mind to that when we're estate planning." Death is unavoidable, and social media platforms are aware of it. Facebook's parent company, Meta, which reportedly has about 3 billion users, gives account holders the option to decide what happens to a profile when the user passes. In its afterlife, a personal account becomes a memorialised account. Meanwhile, other platforms including LinkedIn, Yahoo and X (formerly Twitter) depend on other users to report a deceased person's account before memorialising or disabling them. Facebook was ahead of most platforms, introducing memorialisation in 2009. Legacy contacts on Facebook can memorialise or permanently delete a deceased person's account. (ABC News: Gabriela Rahardja) But there's a catch: account users need to assign a "legacy contact" to verify their death. This needs to be organised before their actual death. With no legacy contact assigned for the account, Ms Milisavljević's options were limited. "[His death] was quite sudden, like he was 34," she said. She sent through the required documents to Facebook, including a death certificate, to prove her husband had died and that she was his next of kin. "You have to put in an application and then you wait for an e-mail [from Facebook]," she said. "I've never seen one come through. You're kind of at a standstill. "It's really heartbreaking to lose a part of them that is still here." Ms Berte, who works at Melbourne-based law firm Kalus Kenny Intelex, said digital estate management could be "very hard" to navigate, even more so when the laws "haven't kept up". Under Victorian property laws, an executor could be assigned through a will to manage the property and assets left by a deceased person. Lisa Berte says it is still uncommon for personal social media accounts to be included in estate planning. (Supplied: Kalus Kenny Intelex) In Facebook terms, that person is equivalent to the legacy contact. According to Ms Berte, when someone doesn't have a will, and therefore no assigned executor, existing laws would intervene. "When you don't have a will, the law determines who can make an application to be in control of your estate," she said. "Our laws haven't kept up with imposing an obligation on these [social media] companies to recognise the authority of your executor … this is a bit of a loophole in the law at the moment. A spokesperson for the eSafety Commissioner said the government agency did not regulate the memorialisation of deceased accounts. Photos in a memorialised Instagram account are preserved. (Instagram) "We encourage tech platforms to provide clear, accessible and responsive support pathw

What happens to your social media account in its afterlife?

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What happens to your social media account in its afterlife?

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