Cemetery dot com: what happens in social networks with accounts of deceased people

Have you ever wondered what is happening with the pages in social networks whose owners have left this world? At the time of the emergence of the main social networks almost 10 years ago, this was not a problem. But with the rapid growth in the number of users and the expansion of the age category of the audience, this sensitive issue became increasingly relevant.

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In the next 50 years, the number of accounts of dead people may exceed the number of live users, and this gap will only increase. Back in 2012, a few years after the network was founded, the number of dead souls on Facebook reached 30 000 000, and almost 8000 accounts are added to them every day. Social networks can turn into virtual cemeteries, writes Sashko Danilenko for VOA.

The Internet gives us digital immortality, all our posts, photos, reposts of recipes, memes and videos with cats can be forever imprinted in binary code, and our descendants will see us like that. Therefore, you need to figure out what to do with it.

The approach of companies to this issue and the proposed options allow us to understand the attitude of each of the social networks to their users in general.

Facebook

Facebook invites users to choose a trusted person who will inherit access to the page, and write a farewell post during their lifetime.

The heir can create new posts, change the profile photo and allow to designate the deceased in the photo of other users. But it will have limited access to messages, editing old posts and the ability to delete friends. The account of the deceased will have a remembering status in front of the name.

On the subject: Through 50 years, Facebook will have more dead people accounts than living ones.

If the death of the user occurred unexpectedly, then a family member can become an heir who will document the relationship and the fact of the person’s death. Facebook can also completely delete a person’s account at the request of the relatives of the deceased.

Instagram

Instagram turns pages of dead people into memorable galleries.

Once an account is set to “memorial” status, no one will be able to log in, publish a new post, story, or change their profile picture.

The page will be available to users in accordance with the privacy settings set during the lifetime of the user. Such an account will not appear publicly in the Explore search section.

Twitter

Twitter is not as flexible in this matter, it offers one option - to disable the account of the deceased, completely destroying all the person's tweets. This option is not suitable for those who left a large legacy consisting of publications. But if deactivation is not done, it puts the deceased’s account at risk.

In 2017, the Twitter account of the famous journalist David Carr, who had almost half a million subscribers, suddenly began posting obscene messages, changed his name to a woman’s name, and his profile photo to a selfie of a girl in underwear. The story attracted a lot of attention to the problem, The New York Times wrote about it, Twitter support intervened and returned the account to its previous form. But in general, this did not change the company's policy on accounts of the deceased.

Google

Google delicately avoids talking directly about death settings, and presents this as an option for an inactive account. The user can set the period of inactivity, after which the system notifies that the last will will be executed.

All your correspondence and documents can be bequeathed to your heirs (maximum 10 people).

This convenient option can be useful during your lifetime, in case someone forgets and cannot recover their email password. Important information will be available through the “heir” account after some time.

VK and OK

VKontakte does not offer the ability to manage the page for the relatives of the deceased, but they can choose: turn off the page, freeze it for memory, or leave the page for viewing only to a close circle, limiting general access.

The topic of death, especially unexpected death, has always interested people. Therefore, VK has large communities of a fairly simple format. Users post a screenshot of the deceased person's last post and write the cause of death. Basically, the last post is some kind of nonsense: reposting a culinary recipe, a photo from a barbecue, fishing with a trophy, or posing in front of a flowerbed. Such an accident and proof of a person’s unpreparedness for the transition to another world collects a bunch of likes and comments. Often, relatives of the deceased begin to fight against such publications, but cannot do anything because these communities do not violate the general rules of the social network.

Odnoklassniki, among the social networks studied, is the least flexible resource regarding the death of users. Even though the site’s audience is predominantly older people, who may be more concerned about the topic of meeting the creator. A death certificate on this network is not sufficient legal evidence to transfer any rights to the page to the family of the deceased.

On the subject: For the first time in history, more old people live on Earth than children: what next?

Only a court decision or a notarized testament on an account can allow you to delete or change the profile of the deceased. The site administration itself explains this by the fact that users can use a fictitious account name, and the accuracy of this information cannot be verified.

Thoughts about what is the right thing to do with the page of a person dear to the heart who has left this world differ. While I was collecting this material, I found stories where the son carefully deleted all accounts and publications of his deceased mother, because any mention of her caused great pain. Or - the opposite reaction - the story of a sister who took care of her brother's page, which became a memorial, where friends and family of the deceased often visited, wrote posts, published memories and left birthday greetings. Just as people leave the room of the deceased untouched, where all things remain in place since the last visit of the owner.

Cemetery dot com

To survive the pain of loss and to hear at least some message from the next world, people are ready to turn to fortunetellers or psychics. Now technologies have snuck into this area.

The first episode of Black Mirror's second season, "Be Right Back," tells the story of a young girl whose boyfriend dies in a car accident. Longing for him, she orders a robot that is a copy of the deceased. Artificial intelligence follows his behavior based on social media analysis. And the girl gradually adapts to this form of continuing the relationship.

This story is no longer fiction. Many companies are developing similar technologies. True, while the available form of communication is only chat. Already, the site Eterni.me creates a bot that responds and responds to messages in real time as a living person. For this, artificial intelligence loads and processes all available information about a person from social networks. And this is just the beginning.

New technologies, in addition to new opportunities, bring a new vision of the world and make it possible to reconsider even such eternal concepts as death. Social networks are the first step in this restructuring.

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