Thanatechnology and Digital Afterlife Industry: does death really renders all equal?
The Internet and especially social platforms were intentionally created for the living to socialize – not as a place for the dead to rest. However, from time to time you come across the abandoned profiles of dead persons or even online cemeteries, including Facebook as the largest of its kind. The structural resistance of the digital era to forget, becomes surprisingly clear at this point. Apparently, through the Internet and social networks, the condition of digital afterlife arises which is fundamentally changes how we handle death and should be therefore subject to a thorough ethical review.
Is there a digital afterlife?
Proponents of so-called thanatechnologies, i.e. any kind of technologies that are used to deal with death, dying, grief and loss, thereby often argue as follows: As already the magnificent Egyptian mausoleums show, the need to be remembered and to pass on memories is an ancient need and was always a privilege. Digital thanatechnologies however enable nearly everyone to be remembered and to be posthumously present by creating a lasting digital legacy and reanimation of oneself – something like a digital afterlife. This former privilege becomes thus “democratized”. Even if the digital afterlife sometimes only includes social media profiles or chat histories of a deceased person, for the relatives, mourning becomes more bearable through these means. In contrast, with the potential deletion of the data which constitutes the digital afterlife, there is an increasing danger of a painful second loss of a loved one.
The Digital Afterlife Industry
As such experiences should be obviously avoided at all costs, and because this could become a gigantic future market, many start-ups and recently also the tech-giants are getting involved here. A growing volume of digital remains thereby necessitates increased digital posthumous interaction with the providers of such services, especially social networks. They are thus incentivised to rather keep dead users’ information within their data economy than deleting it. This business field is thereby usually monetized through targeted advertising of the mourners and purchasable premium extensions for the consumers’ digital depiction. Altogether, this upcoming digital afterlife industry may be classified into four categories: One the one site, there are information management services helping users to deal with problems regarding digital assets and posthumous messaging services delivering digital communicative content upon the death of their users to previously appointed recipients. On the other site, there are online memorial services offering a digital space to mourn for the deceased and thereby making use of the well-known global platform principle and re-creation services that use personal data in order to digitally reanimate dead persons by replicating their social behaviour or even their physical appearance digitally. While the first two categories are still rather digital counterparts to real-world services, the last two categories probably strongly change the essence or personhood of the deceased posthumously and even allow for something like a "digital immortality" in case of re-creations. Accordingly, the question is thus no longer what is possible, but what is ethically justifiable.
The Ethical Dilemmas of Thana-Technology
The ethical debate in the scientific community around digital afterlife just occurred a few years ago and is being noticed very hesitantly by the general public. Ethicists however state that the integrity of the informational body could be in danger which concerns pretty much everyone who plans to die one day. Accordingly, digital remains of a deceased person may be seen as a persons’ "informational human body". Following the philosopher Patrick Stokes, physically dead people continue to persist in our lifeworld through their informational body. The imperative to respect a person’s bodily integrity therefore commands to preserve it by all means.
The current situation however does not correspond to this at all: First, in social networks, profiles are still normally deleted after death, and relatives usually have no possibility to obtain the data of their deceased loved ones. This exactly would depict a blatant cut into their bodily integrity. Second, even if the informational body is being maintained through online memorial or re-creation services, there is a danger that the informational body of the deceased alters posthumously: memorial platforms are incentivised to present the deceased in accordance with commercial interest and moreover, AI-recreations of the deceased may develop a "life of their own" over time. However, both cases take place so far without the obligation of a direct confirmation by the consumer. Further, the legal status of digital remains a.k.a. "digital assets" is unclear in most countries. Third, beyond that, a rather Marxist comprehension even suspects a threat to human dignity, i.e. being the master of one's own existence, and not to be alienated from oneself through the process of capitalist exploitation. However, the digital informational bodies of the deceased can be made productive by commercializing the afterlife with the means describes above. The production process thereby shapes the informational bodies, which are resource, commodity and labour at once, in their most capitalizable form. At this juncture, the philosopher Carl Öhmann states that the greater the quantity and quality of the service used in thanatechnologies, the greater becomes the risk of a violation of human dignity because of profit interests.
Does death really render all equal?
In summary, the hopes as well as the criticism presented so far have one thing in common: they assume death becomes more equal through thanatechnologies. While supporters of thanatechnologies see them as "great equalizer" with which the potentially endless persistence of the informational body is no longer reserved for the privileged, critics claim that the harm and alienation of the informational body through digital afterlife services affects everyone equally bad. But is it really like this? If one believes the claim that introducing new technological capacities into a non-egalitarian society generally tends to disproportionately benefit the rich and powerful, another ethical objection arises: the informational body and its persistence becomes a commodity and thus linked to the economic inequalities in the society which is alive. A lot speaks for this. Many services in the digital afterlife industry offer to extend the visibility, presentation and durability of a digital body for a surcharge. In addition, it is probably only worthwhile for free-of-charge providers to maintain the digital body as long as its underlying data is profitable through targeted advertising. In both cases, the economic possibilities of the deceased and their relatives would be decisive for the persistence of the informational body. Hence, according to estimations, digital immortality may not last longer than 20 years for most people. Apparently, equality of death may only occur when equality of the living is given.
Is there a future for the digital afterlife?
Altogether, there are massive ethical objections to the current developments of the digital afterlife industry. The improvement suggestions are still as half-baked as this whole sector. However, when using digital afterlife services, it should be at least legally ensured that consumers are fully aware of the consequences which are described above. In addition, researchers are currently working on the possibilities of "thanato-sensitive design", i.e. considering mortality and the integrity of the informational body already in the design of a system. One can therefor hope for new insights in the future.