You might come and go from the earth, but the internet is forever, and the people over at Instagram know it. The app has launched a new feature that will allow friends and family to mark your page as a memorial after you've gone to the other side. Your page will have a small banner underneath your username, listing you as "Remembered." Ghosting your followers takes on a whole new meaning.
Before this implementation, Instagram only permitted family members to commemorate deceased accounts through a form on the website. By filling out the form, you prevent the account from being altered, deleted, or accessed in any way. Even having a password won't open it up. A memorialized account can still perform one normal action though, receiving DMs from followers.
The decision comes in light of thousands of recent COVID-19 cases, which have piled up memorialized accounts. "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," said a spokesperson for Instagram, Liza Crenshaw.
Facebook has much stricter rules for how the dead are remembered online, allowing users to pick an heir for their account prior to their passing. Twitter, on the other hand, has no feature that allows an account to be held beyond the grave. They claim to be working on a decent way to save the accounts while also freeing up usernames from inactive accounts. Thankfully, at least Instagram will always remember you.