All The Ghosts In The Machine – What Happens To Our Digital Profiles When We Die?
What happens in the digital afterlife? Why do we memorialise Facebook accounts? How does Facebook know someone has passed? Do you centralise all your logins and passwords? Would you want your social media accounts accessed after you passed? What if trolls were targeting a loved one’s page who passed? Or, you were locked out of accessing family members photos?
Elaine Kasket delicately and charmingly explores the digital afterlife in the thought-provoking All The Ghosts In The Machine.
We live our lives online. Facebook feeds celebrating milestones, friendships and bad days. We post Instagram photos with captions depicting happy holidays and supposedly perfect lives. LinkedIn holds our whole careers and WhatsApp, Gmail and Messenger hold our most private exchanges. It’s how we live, how we ALL live, but what happens when we pass away? When we die, what happens to all that data?
Duffy’s Thoughts On All The Ghosts In The Machine
Author Elaine Kasket delves into the complicated world of extensive terms and conditions of social media giants and also some moving, personal stories of loss and the digital afterlife. All The Ghosts In The Machine provokes a lot of thinking. There are stories of young women taken in domestic violence tragedies whose families cannot access Facebook accounts to delete smiling photos of the perpetrator. There are parents who rely on still accessing Facebook pages of children who have died, to remain connected in some way, and others that want to wipe away any trace.
All The Ghosts In The Machine had me thinking. What if I died? No-one knows the online subscriptions, apps, and login’s I have and would I want them shared? Would I want Mum going through my WhatsApp messages? Probably not, but would I want my parents to access my blog and writing over the years? Yes, I think I would. I came to the stark realisation that my digital footprint will last far longer than myself and sparked many questions:-
Is my data something I would be proud or comfortable to leave?
Are my posts authentic? Or do I promote brand Duff instead? Is that a good or a bad thing?
Who will have access to my digital life when I have passed and should I put in place instructions in my will?
How will my data be used, stored, and who will see it? Will my posts languish in cyberspace for eternity?
Who owns Duffy in the digital afterlife?
All The Ghosts In The Machine covers case studies, personal stories and the latest processes and regulations of the big social media players, particularly Facebook. If you’ve ever sent a Snapchat, posted an Insta story or checked in on Facebook, you need to read this book. Your data doesn’t
