Twitter is set to introduce 'memorialized accounts' for users who have passed away. To date, it has only been possible for family members or estate executors to request the removal of a deceased user's account or to leave it effectively active. The move is part of Twitter's broader work to help people better understand whose profile or tweet they may be viewing.
Memorialized social media accounts are not a new concept, with Facebook having introduced them in 2009 and evolved the feature gradually over the years. Despite having been launched in 2006, Twitter has never offered such a feature. It appears to have been moved to do so following feedback last year on its attempts to delete inactive accounts.
In its efforts to do so, Twitter was alerted to the fact that many accounts are inactive because their owners have passed away and that they should not necessarily be deleted. Not only may tweets remain valuable on the site, but the social media accounts of those who have died can provide a way for people to remember the person, revisit times they had together, and pay tribute to them. Twitter called its oversight of this "a miss on our part" and committed to not deleting any accounts until it had created a way to memorialize those of people who had died.
Twitter's Plans for Memorialized Accounts
Among the information it has been providing about the planned relaunch of its public verification system, Twitter has now reaffirmed its intent to build a new account type specifically designed to memorialize users who have passed away and indicated its intention to do so in 2021. Although the introduction of the feature appears to have stemmed from Twitter's work around deleting inactive accounts, it stated "We know how important it is to preserve a Twitter account in memory of someone who has passed."
There is little in the way of additional detail as yet, other than that an updated policy for memorialization will be created, as will a new process for requesting the memorialization of an account. Judging by Twitter's comments and the implementation of such features elsewhere, though, it is likely that such accounts will display a memorialization label of some sort and may well have additional features for the specific purpose, such as a means by which to pay tribute to a deceased user.
It is perhaps surprising that it has taken Twitter so long to introduce this sort of feature. It is also not hard to imagine that, over the past 14 years, the friends and family members of many Twitter users who are no longer with us may have preferred a means of memorializing an account rather than having to choose between leaving it active or deleting it altogether. Regardless, it's a positive move from Twitter and hopefully one that may help people in some small way as they remember those they've lost.
Source: Twitter