A new feature was added to Facebook this week- the ‘legacy contact’. For the first time, the site will allow users to designate someone to formally manage your profile after you die- including a pinned post with key information.
In some sense, this is a new sort of civil right- we have traditionally had rights on how we live, but not how we die. Aid in dying has suddenly gained more widespread acceptance, including a potentially key legislative debate in California, after always being a fringe social movement. From legal changes to more informal recognition by institutions like Facebook, society’s sense of freedom is changing. The 20th century was full of landmark changes in the concept of rights and what a free society should look like. And even though the 21st has had serious conflicts over civil liberties, the debate continues to expand.
Unspoken Politics 