Monday, February 25, 2013
I happened upon an article regarding the use of social media sites after death that, frankly, made me extremely uncomfortable.
There is a British television drama show called Black Mirror. Each season is a string of standalone episodes, and the show is described as, “[a] thought-provoking and gripping reflection and extrapolation of current social, cultural and technology inspired trends and fears.” One of the most recent episodes features a woman who loses social media-addicted boyfriend to a tragic accident. Her friend signs her up for a service that uses the boyfriend’s past social media postings to create a virtual version of him. The woman is horrified when she first receives an e-mail from her dead husband, but she warms to the idea and goes as far as to have his voice recreated on the telephone and, eventually, even has a synthetic version of him made.
It sounds very farfetched and science fiction, but the truth is closer to this Black Mirror episode than you would think. There are several applications, including one coming soon for Twitter called LivesOn, that do exactly that. They use complicated algorithms to analyze all of a person’s Tweets and other online postings in order to get an idea of how that person speaks and continue posting on behalf of the dearly departed. For LivesOn, the person must appoint an executor to have access to the deceased’s account, something that has been brought up as a possible violation of many social media sites’ privacy policies. Dead Social, another site for social media after death, allows you to set up posts to be released at specifics times once you’ve died.
Many people have serious misgivings about programs like these. While there have not been many studies on the topic, psychologists have found many aspects of social media life after death to be problematic. For example, what about the people who use it to harass or stalk others after they’ve died?
Recently a good family friend died suddenly. His son and grandson have his Facebook login information, so his Facebook was updated several times after his death (they always announced that it was them posting under his name in order to get in contact with his friends). It was difficult because sometimes I would forget that he had died then get a sinking feeling when I realized it was a family member posting under his name. I could not imagine if there was something in place that actually updated his Facebook on his behalf.
I love social media for what it is – a place for me to keep in touch with people in my life. It would be too bizarre to have ‘updates’ from people in my life who have died. These ghosts in the machine, so to speak, would drive me away from websites such as Facebook and Twitter, and I fear for the day when it gets as far as it did in the show Black Mirror with the recreation of the deceased peoples’ voices and, eventually, the people themselves.
“Black Mirror - A New Drama From Charlie Booker.” Endemol UK. http://www.endemoluk.com/news/black-mirror-a-new-drama-from-charlie-brooker (accessed February 25, 2013).
Coldwell, Will. “Why death is not the end of your social media life.” The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/shortcuts/2013/feb/18/death-social-media-liveson-deadsocial (accessed February 25, 2013).
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1 comments:
Rest in Peace-Ok, in my opinion, Rest in Peace should mean just that. Out of consideration, wouldn't it be wiser for a person to recreate their own blog, twitter account, or Facebook page in honor of that person; yet using their own name and acknowledging the love one that has passed. OH, my to me, personal is just that. Yet to each is reach, I wish someone would start blogging for my late husband or recently past brother, I would not be happy at all. As my son and I discuss this posting, I asked him how he felt about the article, and he said, he thinks it's not as if they are carrying on as if they were living, My son who is 20 years old, continued to say what if that person was inspirational, and they just wanted to share the deceased persons strength? My thoughts on that is create your own page and invited everyone who wand to chat and remember that person’s legacy
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