Legendary film star and comedian Betty White had a lustrous career spanning over seven decades. Many recognize her range of work, including features on Saturday Night Live, The Golden Girls, and The Lorax.  While the news of the film icon’s death in December 2021 devastated a significantly large number of devoted fans, it raised many questions as to who is maintaining her Instagram account. The curiosity has consumed many news articles, and further poses the question: what are Instagram’s policies on account ownership after the death of the user? According to Instagram’s community guidelines, “if you see an account on instagram that belongs to someone who’s passed away, you can request that we memorialize the account. If you’re an immediate family member of the person, you can request that the account be removed from Instagram”(Instagram Help Center). While this policy is valid, there are still some gray areas in regard to activity on the account that belonged to the deceased. The question still remains: Why is Betty White’s Instagram not memorialized/removed, and who is responsible for the recent posts?

The most recent Instagram posts on Betty’s account were from January of this year. The last post urged followers to “stay tuned” for more content on the platform and for the time being, comments would be turned off. The person responsible for releasing this content is Betty’s former assistant Kiersten Mikelas. In the article, “Betty White’s Instagram Can Die Now”, Olivia Craighead confirms that “In a post at the time, Mikelas wrote that the White estate had “very graciously offered [her] the opportunity to manage Betty’s social media accounts”. This statement would ultimately imply that Mikelas legally obtained the rights to Betty’s social accounts, and is responsible for making decisions regarding what content should be released. However, many fans believe that the posts should stop. Craighead highlights this idea through the statement, 

“It doesn’t have to be like this. When a celebrity dies, their social accounts should go with them. No one was clamoring to see an old photo of White dressed in her volunteer services uniform for Memorial Day. Just like no one needs Joan Rivers’s daughter Melissa to occasionally hop onto her late mother’s Twitter account to share a throwback photo of Joan with Howard Stern. Let these women rest”.

This thought provoking discussion certainly lends insight into the ethics of posting on the behalf of a deceased loved one, and could even explain why there have not been posts to Betty’s account in the last couple months. Ultimately, the decision should lie in the hands of the original user, or perhaps the content should end with them. 

When looking at Instagram’s deceased user policy through Betty White’s situation, it is clear that it is inconclusive or limited altogether. It remains unclear whether her family wanted the account to remain active or be removed, which according to Instagram, is a choice within their rights. When noting that the Betty White estate had full control in granting Mikelas the rights to the account, it seems that Instagram is not in control of securing the deceased’s digital assets. The policy could potentially make room for improvement, possibly by allowing the account’s original owner to decide who inherits the account after they pass or even remove it thereafter. Ultimately, Instagram’s current policy offers limited information on what happens to an account after its owner is deceased, and it appears to be a decision that cannot only be made by friends and family, but estate owners as well. While the future direction of this policy remains unclear, it may be necessary for owners to have a plan in action in order to be prepared.

References 

1. Craighead, Olivia. “Betty White’s Instagram Can Die Now.” Gawker, Gawker, 1 June 2022, https://www.gawker.com/celebrity/betty-whites-instagram-can-die-now.
2. “Other Types of Reports.” Help Center, Instagram, https://help.instagram.com/151636988358045.