A Berlin mother has sued Facebook in the hope of getting access to her dead daughter’s social media account to search for answers on whether or not her child’s death was an accident.
The girl, who has not been identified, died five years ago, aged 15, when she was run over by an oncoming train at a German subway station.
To this day, her parents don’t know if the death was suicide or an accident.
They believe they could get closure through the posts and messages on her Facebook page, which they hope will reveal more about her death.
Tuesday marked the first trial at Berlin’s superior court of justice, during which the family hopes to gain access to the Facebook page from the social media giant.
Judges gave both parties two weeks to find a solution outside of court before making a verdict, according to DW.com.
In the first trial between the Berlin couple and Facebook back in December 2015, judges ordered the social media company to give the parents access to the account, arguing that giving the parents access wouldn’t violate the daughter’s personal rights, since she was still a minor.
The US social network, which does not automatically delete dead users’ accounts, appealed, arguing that the decision to release the account information would affect other users who exchanged messages with the girl that they believed would remain private.
The case brings the idea of Facebook legacies to the forefront, asking what will happen to your account when you die?
More than a billion pages are active on the social media site sharing photos, videos and messages every day – many of which aren’t saved anywhere but on the site.
Some message threads span years of friendships or relationships as people grow closer to one another.
In 2015, Facebook launched the concept of memorialised pages, which replaced active pages once the user died.
The social network said that once they had been notified of a user’s death, it would ‘memorialise’ the profile and allow the designated trustee to post a message to appear at the top of the timeline as well as respond to new friend requests and change the profile and cover photos.
Until then, accounts were memorialised by Facebook and could still be viewed, but could not be accessed or edited by anyone else.
Facebook placed tight restrictions on the legacy contract system, with users only able to name one person as a trustee of their account. Only users over 18 years old could participate.
If they do not do so, but do name a ‘digital heir’ in their will, Facebook said it would acknowledge this person as the legacy contract holder.
Users could also have their accounts deleted instead.
Facebook also ensured that the account of a user who did not show up as a ‘suggested friend’ or in other ways that could upset the person’s loved ones.
The main difference between an active account and a memorialised account is that no one can log into a memorialised account.
This is the problem with the case currently being heard in Berlin’s superior court.
The parents of the girl allowed her to make a Facebook when she was 14 years old if she shared her password with them.
But when the mother tried to log into her account after she died, it was already memorialised and could no longer be accessed with a login. It is still unclear who prompted the page’s memorialisation.
Daily Mail
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