Akunyili; Agbana
On
that Saturday morning, in his Lagos home – before he got up from bed –
there were six birthday notifications on his smartphone from Facebook,
reminding him to wish his friends happy birthday celebrations.
But what
baffled him was that one of these friends, who was his course mate at
the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Ogbomoso, Oyo State, was
already dead. This made him wonder, “Why is Facebook asking me to wish a
dead person a happy birthday celebration? Is Ade still alive?”
But before long, Peter Abisoye got an
answer: Ade – his deceased friend – is not alive, but his Facebook
account is still active.
“Every morning, I get birthday
notifications of my family and friends from Facebook, so I don’t even
need to know offhand or look at the calendar for their birthdays again.
The internet and social media have really brought me closer to them,
even though we are separated by distance,” Abisoye said. “But what I
don’t understand is why the social media company keep sending birthday
notifications of dead people? You know, many times when it happens, like
it happened to me, it makes me remember some memories of the departed
ones – both the good and the bad.”
After
the brief moment of amazement, Abisoye said he got on the page of his
deceased friend and wrote: “Ade, you remain one of the best friends I
ever had in school. I remember how we used to eat burnt beans together,
woo girls together and watch football matches in Adenike area on
weekends. Death is so painful, but your memory is not. Live on,
brother.”
“I got on his page and I posted a brief
birthday message in his memorial. Before I realised what was going on,
about 20 of our colleagues in school had also followed suit. I guessed
they must have been notified as well of Ade’s birthday from Facebook.
Well, I think it’s good to keep the page alive, in memory and honour of
the deceased,” he added.
But one or two others who posted didn’t even know Ade was dead.
“Someone, please tell me this is not
true. I spoke with Ade two months ago and he was fine. No wonder I have
been trying to reach him all this while and he’s unreachable. So sad to
hear, Ade,” one of them wrote.
Almost
every internet-ready smartphone and Facebook user today gets reminders
of special events and this was perhaps the same scenario when many fans
of the late female gospel singer and composer, Kefee Obareki Don-Momoh,
popularly known as Kefee, woke up on Thursday, February 5, 2015 to find
notifications from Facebook that she was celebrating her birthday.
Kefee died of lung failure in a Los
Angeles hospital in the United States on Thursday, June 12, 2014, after
spending 15 days in a coma. She was aged 34.
But not all her fans would want to believe she’s dead. One of them, with the name ‘PurpleiciousBabe,’ wrote on a blog, bellanaija.com,
on July 13, 2014, a month after her death, “Trust me, I am still in
denial. I can’t even mourn her. It’s just not fair. Not our Kefee, so
full of life and personality.”
That was, perhaps, understandable.
So on February 5, when the singer was
supposed to have clocked 35, many of them took to her Facebook page to
pour both birthday and memorial messages in honour of the deceased.
However, it seemed some were not still aware of her death.
One Emily Anukem, who posted on the
deceased’s Facebook page, wrote, “Happy birthday, Kefee Obareki
Don-Momoh!!! Make sure you have a wonderful birthday today,” whereas
other fans like Uchenna Azubuike wrote, “Kefee, although you’re no more
here with us, I know you’d read this. Happy birthday!”
From ‘Happy birthday to you,’ to ‘Rest on, Kefee’ messages, about 113 birthday messages were posted on her Timeline.
Popular gospel singer, Sammie Okposo,
had at the death of the late singer, said, “We will perform the last
respects we owe our sister to the best of our abilities. We will let the
world know that a queen was here and she will always be celebrated. She
brought peace, happiness and love to the world even in her passing and
even though we are heartbroken, we will be comforted in the fact that
God knows best and we cannot question Him.”
Kefee’s widower, Teddy Don Momoh, also
hosted a press conference to unveil her double post-humous albums and an
‘Evening with Kefee,’ a musical programme designed to commemorate her
birthday, where he told journalists that he was still in shock over the
death of his wife.
“While she was still alive, Lagosians
gave her huge support and those days on her birthdays, we always did
something special. This year would not be an exception. This year, we
are having a programme tagged ‘An Evening with Kefee,’” he had said at
the event. “Keep supporting her and giving her your best, because Kefee
lives on.”
A place of memorial
The social media, especially Facebook,
is surely one of the platforms that enables family and friends to keep
the memories of their loved ones after they are long gone.
An American researcher, Emily Dunham,
believes that either in the 2060s or the 2130s, there will be more
Facebook profiles of dead people than of living ones.
“There are now a lot of dead people on
Facebook. The main reason for this is that Facebook – and its users –
are young. The average Facebook user has got older over the last few
years, but the site is still used at a much higher rate by the young
than by the old,” she said.
She noted that based on the site’s
growth rate, and the age breakdown of their users over time, there are
probably 10 to 20 million people who have Facebook profiles, but have
since died.
She added, “These people are, at the
moment, spread out pretty evenly across the age spectrum. Young people
have a much lower death rate than people in their sixties or seventies,
but they make up a substantial share of the dead on Facebook simply
because there have been so many of them using it.
“About 290,000 US Facebook users might
have died in 2013. In just seven years, this death rate will double, and
in seven more years, it will double again. Even if Facebook closes
registration tomorrow, the number of deaths per year will continue to
grow for many decades, as the generation who was in college between 2000
and 2020 grows old.”
Dunham’s research was backed up by
another report by an American research firm, Internet Monitor. The
organisation said in the report that deceased users may be Facebook’s
greatest source of growth in the next century.
The report surfaced the curious
projection that, if the social media giant’s user base continues to
grow, dead users of the platform will outnumber living ones by 2130.
Meanwhile, one of Facebook’s policies is
that a next-of-kin can convert a dead person’s Facebook profile into a
memorial page, but there are so many questions that are always asked
when this happens.
According to the social media company,
“There are a lot of questions surrounding passwords and access to
private data that we haven’t yet developed social norms for. Should
accounts remain accessible? What should be made private? Should a
next-of-kin have the right to access email? Should memorial pages have
comments? How do we handle trolling and vandalism? Should people be
allowed to interact with dead user accounts? What lists of friends
should they show up on?
“These are issues that we’re currently
in the process of sorting out by trial and error. Death has always been a
big, difficult, and emotionally charged subject, and every society
finds different ways to handle it. Sooner or later, we’ll figure out how
to mourn.”
The company also provides some tips to reporting a deceased person.
It says, “Memorialised accounts are a
place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person
has passed away. Memorialising an account also helps keep it secure by
preventing anyone from logging into it.
“If Facebook is made aware that a person
has passed away, it’s our policy to memorialise the account. Please
keep in mind that we can’t provide login information for someone else’s
account even under these circumstances. It’s always against Facebook’s
policies to log into another person’s account.
“To report a profile to be memorialised,
please contact us. The word ‘Remembering’ will be shown next to the
person’s name on their profile. Depending on the privacy settings of the
account, friends can share memories on the memorialised Timeline.
“Content the person shared (ex: photos,
posts) stays on Facebook and is visible to the audience it was shared
with. Memorialised profiles don’t appear in public spaces such as in
suggestions for ‘People You May Know’, ads or birthday reminders. No one
can log into a memorialised account.
“Memorialised accounts that don’t have a
legacy contact can’t be changed. Groups with an admin whose account was
memorialised will be able to select new admin. Pages with a sole admin
whose account was memorialised will be removed from Facebook if we
receive a valid request.
“Additionally, your family can ask that
your account be removed from Facebook. For friends and family, if you’d
like to create an additional place for people on Facebook to share
memories of your loved one, we suggest creating a group. If you believe
we’ve mistakenly memorialised your account, please let us know. However,
to remove a deceased person’s account, verified immediate family
members may request the removal of a loved one’s account from Facebook.”
An Information Technology and security analyst, Babawale Ojoye, told Saturday PUNCH
that social media companies granting people the privilege of
memorialising their friends’ Facebook and other social media pages “is a
good thing.”
“Many people are not aware of this, but
rather than letting those pages lie fallow, they could still remain busy
with social activities – about the life and times of the person,” he
said. “But the challenge is finding someone who will serve as an
administrator for that page. People in this part of the world tend to
believe when a person is gone, they’re gone. On several occasions, there
are no arrangements made to keep their memories afresh.”
Two
months after her death, the Facebook page of former Director-General of
the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Mrs.
Dora Akunyili, was still agog with social activities. There were posts
about her life, burial arrangements and the ceremony proper, but that
was only for two months. Whoever ran the page seemed to relax at a
point, but a day after her birthday (July 14, 2015), her husband and
children took to her Facebook page to write, “Our darling Dora would
have been 60 yesterday – July 14 – if she were to be alive. But she is
no more – felled 37 days ago by the mortal enemy, death, on Saturday,
June 7, 2014.
“Beloved Dora, you had eagerly looked forward to this day, but alas, you never lived to see it. We deeply love you, Mummy…”
But for the late Goldie Harvey, the
talented female singer and a Big Brother Africa star, she gets mentions
on blogs and by fans on her page, an indication that her memory lingers
on in the hearts of her fans.
For
the late Cynthia Osokogu, who was allegedly murdered in 2012 by male
friends that she met through Facebook, her page has since been
memorialised, while her friends have also created groups in honour of
her memorial.
However, for late Gbenga Agbana, a
former journalist who worked in several media houses before his death in
2012, only those who were close to him would know he’s late, as his
page still gets regular posts.
The dead and the Internet
Technology experts talk about the concept of digital inheritance when a user of any of the services on the internet dies.
According to Wikipedia,
“Digital inheritance is the process of handing over (personal) digital
assets to (human) beneficiaries. These digital assets include digital
estates and the right to use them. It may include bank accounts,
writings, photographs, and social interactions.
“There are several services that offer
to keep multiple passwords, sending them to people of personal choice
after death. Some of these send the customer an email from time to time,
prompting to confirm that that person is still alive, and failure to
respond to multiple emails makes the service provider to assume that the
person has deceased, and will thereafter give out the passwords as
previously requested.”
In the article, it was stated that when
people die, they leave certain things behind, including all their online
profiles, email accounts, and social media information. While some
sites, including Facebook and Twitter, have policies related to death,
accounts often remain dormant until deleted due to inactivity or family
or friends take action.
However, as the Internet age progresses,
it will come to a point where inactive accounts of deceased people will
outnumber those of active users – yet another article that supports the
researches of Dunham and the Internet Monitor.
By the way, Facebook isn’t alone in trying to solve the digital data management problem when a person dies.
In 2013, Internet search giant, Google, began allowing people to assign beneficiaries of their Google accounts. The Inactive Account Manager sends a user a text message and an email if they haven’t logged into their Gmail, Google Maps, Google Drive, YouTube or any other Google apps account for a set amount of time — between three months and 18 months.
If the user doesn’t respond to Google’s
alert, Google will send the person’s Google account data to a trusted
contact or contacts, before deciding what to do with such account.
Like Facebook and Google, upon request,
Twitter can close accounts and provide archives of public tweets of
deceased users. When a user dies, family members are required to submit a
formal request to Twitter’s Trust and Safety department. However, the
reporter must have a copy of the death certificate or else the company
will not take action, despite obituary articles and news clips. But most
times, Twitter only allows account deactivation for the deceased.
For Wikipedia, users who have
made at least several hundred edits or are otherwise known for
substantial contributions to the platform can be noted at a central
memorial page. Wikipedia user pages are ordinarily fully edit-protected
after the user has died, to prevent vandalism.
“All these are necessary measures to
protect and keep in honour the memories of our loved ones. Even if they
are not seen physically, they can be remembered forever online, where
they keep living,” IT expert, Ojoye said.
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