Digital heritage: "social death" again after death

Let’s take a multiple-choice question:

If you die one day, will you let others inherit your digital inheritance, or will you clear all data with one click?

Recently, Apple officially launched the "Digital Heritage Plan", bringing this topic to the forefront again:

If you are using an Apple mobile phone, and you happen to have updated the system to iOS15 .2 version, you will see a brand new feature - "Legacy Contacts".

Here, you can designate 5 people to be your "legacy contacts" and send them text messages after the settings are completed:

"Xiaohei, I have added you As my estate contact. You will have access to the data in my account after my death. I have shared the access key with you and it will be automatically stored in your 'Account' settings. , you can use this key to access my iCloud data.”

As this text message says, after you die, they only need to show your death certificate and access key to view your phone. iCloud data in it, including photos, videos, notes, documents, personal information, etc.

So here comes the question: Can you set it up?

Congratulations,

Another "social death" after your death

When I told my mother that "Apple has launched a digital legacy plan", she said that she still She has to spend time thinking about who will inherit it, and I am not her first choice——

It can be seen that for a distributor, digital inheritance not only risks leaking privacy after death, but also may Exacerbating family disintegration during lifetime.

Just kidding. However, an Internet joke that has been popular for many years may sum up most people’s attitude towards digital heritage:

“If one day I have a car accident and am unfortunately hit by a car while walking on the road, I will also You must first clear the chat history on your phone before you can pass out on the ground with confidence.

After all, as the old saying goes, 'Don't be afraid of being shattered into pieces, as long as your innocence remains in the world.'"

In fact, digital heritage is not a new topic.

As early as 2003, UNESCO proposed in the "Charter for Preserving Digital Heritage": Digital heritage is unique human knowledge and expression, which includes culture, education, science, management information, technology , legal, medical and other information generated in digital form.

In layman's terms, we can divide digital heritage into two major categories:

The first category is "property" heritage, those things that are "very valuable" to the naked eye.

For example, your Alipay balance, out-of-print skins from Honor of Kings, NetX cloud memberships with one week left to expire, and NFT virtual artworks; in addition, creators’ digital albums, photography works, and designs "Virtual assets" such as pictures and personal patents can also be included in this classification.

The first category is "spiritual" inheritance, most of which cannot be sold for money, but have special meaning to the parties involved. For example, your major platform accounts (WeChat, QQ, Weibo, Douban, Hupu), as well as the chat records, personal diaries, browsing history, etc. in these accounts.

Obviously, the digital heritage that humans most want to destroy is the latter.

Many people said that what people need more than "legacy contacts" is the "one-click clear" function -

After your death, once someone tries to access you content on your phone, the system will automatically format your phone and clear all traces you left on the Internet with one click.

The "burn after reading" function of the social software Snapchat has become popular in social networks because it has met the social needs of focusing on personal privacy; in the popular Japanese drama "The Deletion Agency", the protagonist The group also provides similar services to the deceased:

As a dying person, you can entrust the staff of the life deletion office to delete/keep your data on your mobile phone, Data on computers and other devices - in fact, there are companies in Japan that provide such services.

As for why people insist on erasing digital heritage, Life Deletion Firm gave an answer:

Society always expects everyone to have only one personality, who is the same on the outside. But in fact, everyone has unsatisfactory moments and unknown secrets. And these things that are difficult to talk about and inconvenient to share are often hidden in electronic devices -

For high-quality idols who shine in front of the public, if you look through their chat records, you may also be able to find tax evasion, tax evasion, etc. Evidence of cheating and prostitution;

In your circle of friends, you may be a life-loving and positive person, but in your Weibo account, you may complain about your boss and release your anger every day.

As you can imagine, there is nothing more "social" than exposing one's privacy after death.

You must know that the people around them (friends and relatives) are often the ones that these people want to hide; and this group of people are most likely to become their inheritance heirs.

If it were you, would you be willing to let them inherit your digital legacy?

What are those who support digital heritage thinking?

One fact is that, although there are still many controversies, many people are already open to digital heritage:

As early as 2012, a survey by Nandu Weekly showed that : 52.19% of people want their loved ones to inherit their digital heritage.

The "China Will Library White Paper" released in 2021 shows that more and more people are including WeChat, QQ, game accounts and other items in their wills, and 21.35% of the post-90s generation hope that their digital inheritance can be inherit.

Why do so many people “support” inheriting digital heritage?

Let’s start with a few classic cases.

In 2004, American man Ellsworth died while performing a mission in Iraq. His parents hoped to access their son's Yahoo mailbox to preserve memories related to their son.

Because they were rejected by Yahoo, they took the latter to court. The final court decision was: they would not provide the password, but the email content would be burned on a CD and given to the parents of the person involved;

In 2011, Ms. Wang from Liaoning, China, because her husband died in a car accident, hoped that Tencent could provide her husband’s QQ password so that she could obtain letters and photos related to the two of them.

However, Tencent’s response was that the only way to get the password is to “retrieve the stolen number”.

From these two cases, it is not difficult to see the necessity and controversy of digital heritage:

For Ellsworth’s parents and Ms. Wang, the deceased The digital legacy left behind provides them with a channel to commemorate: whether it is photos of relatives or emails, they can become a kind of sustenance for future generations——

Nowadays, many people’s circle of friends are It is only visible for three days. Just imagine, once you die, even if your relatives want to find memories from your circle of friends, it will become a luxury;

Another key problem is that Internet companies only store users every year Information requires huge operating costs, so if a social account is unused for a long time, it will face being canceled.

Therefore, most people’s fight for digital heritage is not to pry into other people’s privacy, but to preserve the last traces of their loved ones in this world.

But digital heritage cannot be inherited in just one or two sentences.

If you carefully read the user terms of each major platform, you will find that what users actually have is the right to use social software, and the ownership is in the hands of the company.

"Accounts may not be given away, borrowed, rented, transferred or sold without our permission" - whether others can inherit your digital heritage is up to you;

At the same time, you should also notice that all major platforms have signed "privacy protection" clauses with users.

Therefore, platforms have legal responsibilities and obligations to protect users’ personal privacy. Once others are allowed to inherit digital heritage, it means that the platform hands over user privacy to others, which first violates the principle of protecting communication confidentiality— —

At the same time, this also means that the platform needs to be responsible for verifying the true identity of the heirs and clarifying the scope of the inheritance they can use. This not only consumes a lot of technical and labor costs, but also bears the possible consequences of review errors. Civil damages risk.

Therefore, this also makes the development of digital heritage "obstructed".

The Facebook case in 2018 brought the topic of digital heritage to a climax again:

In 2012, an underage girl in Germany died in a subway station, but Based on the only on-site surveillance and eyewitness testimony, the police could not find the specific cause of the accident.

Therefore, the girl’s parents hoped to log in to their daughter’s Facebook account to see if there were any clues on it, but Facebook refused to provide relevant content on the grounds of protecting personal privacy.

So the girl’s parents sued Facebook. After three trials and three judgments, the case finally came to an end in 2018:

According to the judgment of the German Federal Supreme Court, Facebook needs to provide the girl with parents provide relevant information.

An interesting point was discussed:

Will it infringe on other people’s privacy rights if the relatives of the deceased inherit the digital inheritance?

In other words, Zhang San complained about his parents with you, but after your death, these chat records were in the hands of your parents. Then who will protect Zhang San’s privacy?

In this case, the German Federal Supreme Court held that allowing relatives to inherit digital inheritance does not violate the relevant rights and interests of others. Because on the Internet, people should be aware of the risk of exposure the moment they send a message——

The chat history Zhang San sent you may have been screenshotted and forwarded to another person, or it may have just happened Seen by others at the scene.

The greatest significance of the Facebook case is that the final judgment made by the German Federal Supreme Court affirmed, to a certain extent, the rationality and legality of the inheritance of digital heritage for the first time. , with pioneering historical significance.

How to divide digital inheritance?

It’s not up to you.

If I want to make a will today and distribute my digital inheritance, I need to go through several steps. step?

In October 2021, the up owner of B station @current channel went to the China Will Library to experience first-hand the relevant processing process of digital heritage wills——

As a result, the young lady in the video before and after It took a *** 2 months and a 4-digit fee to complete the "distribution" of the digital heritage.

One fact is: distributing digital heritage is not just as simple as leaving an account and password -

Since the relevant legal system is not yet perfect, the scope of use and inheritance methods of digital heritage , each social software has its own different regulations.

Therefore, if you directly write "I declare that XXX will inherit my Bilibili account" in your will, such a paragraph will not have legal effect.

Before establishing a will, you must first consult the major social platforms for their relevant rules:

For example, WeChat still does not have the idea of ??inheriting an account, and relatives can only By presenting the death certificate and other relevant documents, the remaining money and property in the account of the deceased can be transferred;

The latest rules announced by Facebook are that people can designate a trusted person to inherit their account after death. , and the "heir" can modify the cover image, apply through friends, etc.

On the other hand, you have to make sure that the digital inheritance you make in your will really belongs to you, otherwise it is easy to make a big mistake.

The sensational "Dragon Slaying Knife" case in 2010 is a typical example:

The man Lu was addicted to online games and owned a top-notch equipment "Dragon Slaying Knife" worth 50,000 yuan. Later, he died in a car accident. When his wife Li inherited his digital inheritance, she was unexpectedly protested by a third person——

It turned out that Lu also had a "wife" Yang in the game. certain. The "Dragon Slaying Knife" was an equipment obtained by him and Yang through perfect cooperation, which also raised questions: "Shouldn't virtual property be inherited by virtual relatives?"

In the end, the court ruled that the two parties Each woman inherits a 50 share of the "Dragon Sword".

In short, there are still many areas that need to be improved in digital heritage. However, in the future, there are many new possibilities for the distribution of digital heritage:

Victor Meyer-Schonberg, a professor at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, once proposed that the future digital heritage can be established in a " "Expiration time" inheritance mechanism:

It stands to reason that the diary will turn yellow and the ink will disappear. "We should also establish a gradual forgetting mechanism to allow the information to gradually 'decompose' or 'rust' over time. ".

Another interesting approach is that just like donating your cornea, you can also choose to donate your digital inheritance after death -

Internet Archive in the United States, Singapore The National Library has already begun to collect valuable web pages and multimedia files into the library. People can donate their digital heritage and contribute to research in sociology and other fields. (As long as it is valuable)

Digital heritage may also give you "eternal life": In 2019, the National Museum of China and Sina Weibo announced that they will include all Weibo content as digital memory and digital heritage to save.

At that time, some people said that they thought of the plot in the British TV series "Black Mirror": If the stored information is rich enough and using these digital heritage, we might be able to restore a robot that looks like the deceased.

So, back to the original question: What will you do with your digital legacy?

Reference materials

[1] Legal regulation of digital heritage inheritance in Germany and its implications for China︱Cha Yanling

[2] Digital heritage inheritance in my country Problem Study︱Cui Can

[3] Who touched my digital heritage︱Shen Ding

[4] Will you delete your digital heritage? ︱Sun Chenxi