What Happens to Your Social Media When You Die?

What happens to someone’s social media when they die? Apparently, a lot. Firstly, anything you’ve written on social media or anywhere on a device is bequeathable and is a legally binding will. Moreover, the difficulty of a machine knowing whether a person is dead has led to several disagreeable, albeit comical, situations. On a positive note, these cases have led to several steps being taken to protect the privacy of both the living and the dead from prying corporate eyes and other objectionable interests.

On the surface, the process seems rather simple. Most platforms can be reached by email or already have a feature where a ‘survivorship’ account can be designated. The person in control of the survivorship may then save posts and other memorabilia before the account is ultimately deleted or in some cases turned into a memorial account. However, as Ted Nelson once quipped,” The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.” This quote is particularly well applied to immortal computer systems and their less-so human counterparts. A particularly well-renown example would be Facebook sending “memories” of dead users to their bereaved friends and family. Naturally, Facebook implemented a solution that allowed profiles to be reported as ‘dead’. However, some clever internet pranksters would go on to exploit the feature and report people as ‘dead’, despite said people being very much alive. The false reporting led to thousands of people being locked out due to their accounts being labeled as ‘dead’ in what came to be known as the Facebook Death Prank.

On a more serious note, an extensive legal battle played out over whether a note left on the “Evernote” app counted as a legally binding will. In the end, a legal precedent was set in Michigan where until overwritten by a statue, documents left on devices can be a legally binding will. Many companies also have special policies regarding the information of the deceased. For example, content posted on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms is often owned by the platform itself and not by the person that posted it. Therefore, if a person dies, control of the person’s social media presence will sit with large companies and not with the loved ones of the person. This allows large companies, without notification or consent, to use uploaded material as their own regardless of the impacts it may have on the person’s life. Imagine Mark Zuckerberg profiting using a video of you dancing, quite literally over your dead body. Nevertheless, there is hope. For instance, a court yet again in Michigan ordered Yahoo Mail to release emails of a marine who was killed in action to their loved ones despite Yahoo’s no right of survivorship clause. Another court in Germany ruled that the right to privacy of the deceased outweighed the rights of inheritance and possession, nullifying companies’ ownership of posted content. This marks a major leap forward in the continuing political and legal fight against large tech firms to protect users’ right to privacy. The importance of these kinds of consumer protections cannot be understated as people’s likenesses could be used in ways unintended by the original poster. In turn, this could impact people’s lives both mentally and socially.

While people’s deaths can be extremely tragic, they can also be a changing force for good. The several campaigns and lawsuits filed to protect rights as well as the several efforts made by companies to create and environment more respectful towards the dead mark a prime example. As sad as they are, these deaths have been a post-mortem service to the rest of society. Even though seemingly minor, the people who died on social media have forever left an improving mark on the online ecosystem and they should be remembered as such.