This itself is a good point: contrary to the assumptions a lot of us made in the 90s, cyberspace really isn't an entirely new plane of existence, and there's a lot of overlap with ideas & concepts which already exist offline & with which we're already familiar.

We already have a process for what happens to a person's belongings after death; a person's online accounts are belongings; therefor we already have a process for what happens to a person's online accounts after death. Yes, each jurisdiction will have its own rules, but again we already have a process for determining what happens to possessions in other jurisdictions upon the owner's death.

(as an aside, this is part of why '… but with a computer!' patents shouldn't be patentable: they're obvious)

An online account is a different thing from a physical object like a letter or journal, which can be freely transferred from one living person to another living person. (The right to reproduce the contents of letters and journals is another matter!) An online account is a contractual relationship. I don't know about Facebook, but most online accounts are explicitly non-transferable. So it's not at all obvious that Germany should make these things transferable on the contractee's death regardless of what's written in the T&Cs, if that's what's happened.

i suppose one could argue that change should have gone in the other direction. but that's academical.

at least now we have consistency, this is of course good