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Facebook killed me, says Taslima Nasreen. Why did it happen?

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Amrutha Pagad
Amrutha PagadJan 18, 2022 | 18:40

Facebook killed me, says Taslima Nasreen. Why did it happen?

What would you do if on the off-chance you decided to scroll through Facebook to see what great things your friends are up to and you are not, but were greeted with your account that’s been turned into an obituary, complete with ‘Remembering Whatsoever-Your-Name-Is’?

Does Facebook think you are dead? And so it has turned your account into a public obituary for you? 

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It may confuse you a little. Then, you’ll probably quit the application and open your account again, only to see the same thing. Then, you might check yourself, your pulse, your surroundings and cross-check with another living being that you are indeed not yet dead. After all this, you may go into a state of panic trying to fix whatever went wrong with your barely used Facebook account.

It can be a harrowing but amusing journey that Facebook thinks you are dead.

Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen is staring at a similar situation. She was greeted with a ‘Remembering Taslima Nasreen’ on her Facebook account and she doesn’t remember being dead or having declared to Facebook that she’s dead!

WHAT IS A ‘REMEMBERING’ FACEBOOK ACCOUNT?

Have you ever wondered what happens to your social media accounts when you, you know, die? It would be cruel to friends and family members to have to see birthday notifications of someone who’s died. Well, there is something that can be done.

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CASE 1: You can decide what happens to your account in the event of your death.

CASE 2: In case the account holder has not set their preferences, then someone can request Facebook to memorialise an account.

In the first case, Facebook offers two options to all account holders:

1. Memoralise the account: Designate a Legacy Contact and also perhaps design your timeline for an obituary of your own (will you shed tears of sadness as you think of this hypothetical situation?).

A legacy contact can be your friend or family member or a stranger – you choose – who will be able to notify Facebook in the event of your death and will be in charge of handling your account-turned-obituary for however long you want. Though the contact won’t have access to your Facebook messages or other information, they will have access to download content and pin or write social media posts.

2. Delete the account: Someone will have to notify Facebook that the account holder is dead. In this case, the second person won’t be able to choose whether to set up a memorial account or not as the account will be deleted.

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Only in rare cases, Facebook will share log-in information and all personal details including messages with someone who’s not an account holder. It usually happens in court-ordered cases.

HOW TO MEMORIALISE AN ACCOUNT?

Like CASE 1 describes, you can go to settings, security and choose whether to memorialise or delete your account in the event of your death.

But if you want to memorialise someone else’s account, you can fill up this form. The form will ask for some document proofs like a death certificate, or even an obituary screenshot. You may also be asked to prove if you are an immediate family member or a friend or your relationship with the deceased.

However, going by the ordeal Taslima Nasreen is facing, it seems pretty easy to memorialise an account.

In Nasreen’s case, it looks like someone is playing a prank; it’s quite possible considering the massive hate club she has. Or it could be the work of a hacker as well.

But Nasreen isn’t the first person to face this problem. Someone posted to question-and-answer forum Stack Exchange, saying that their account was memorialised (while they were, you guessed it right, alive).

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A screenshot from Stack Exchange on wrongful memorialisation of a Facebook account.

The reactions to the post were hilarious. One user wrote, “After one dies, one's soul is transported to a different branch of the Facebook company for eternal exploitation.”

Perhaps, the Facebook nightmare won’t end even in one’s death.

WHAT TO DO IF YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT IS WRONGLY MEMORIALISED?

If your Facebook account was memorialised wrongly, then you can try to convince Meta that you are alive by clicking on My Personal Account is in a Special Memorialized State. You can try sending a bunch of emails to the company while you are it and also rant about it on Twitter, like Nasreen.

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A screenshot of form you can fill to fix a wrongly memorialised Facebook account. Photo: Facebook

And if you think it is cool to pull a prank on someone by memorialising their Facebook account, think again, because the social media giant says it amounts to 'penalty of perjury', a legal offence. 

For the sake of good social media keeping, it is better to set a legacy contact or choose to delete an account, on the event of the account holder’s death. It will also protect the account from hackers, who may take advantage of it after the account holder’s death.

Ok, you can go back to FB now.

Last updated: January 18, 2022 | 19:39
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