[jzb]

None of your examples are like a social media handle or account. I can’t visit my dead friend’s bank account to see pictures of us together with a story and comments about a great trip. (As just one example.)

I can export my history from social sites with some ease, but it’s not so easy to preserve other’s once they’ve passed.

The larger topic of how to handle death / inactive accounts on social media deserves some discussion. I’ve had a few friends and several colleagues pass in the last ten years. It’s nice to be able to visit their pages. It’s disconcerting as fuck to have, say, Facebook try to prompt you to message them because you haven’t in a while or because it’s their birthday.

But your response is fairly callous and flippant. Do better.

[paulryanrogers]

Social media is more like a common space, and unique user names are a limited resource. Being born with a common name I've come to terms with never getting my name and being difficult to identify among the masses with the same name.

The people who remember me will have their memories and any copies of digital exchanges or recordings they've made. That's more than enough for me. We'll all be forgotten soon enough.

And recycling user names should actually make problems like disturbing notifications less likely.

[jzb]

"Social media is more like a common space, and unique user names are a limited resource."

This doesn't persuade me that culling usernames after someone dies is a great policy, especially when it also removes their content.

On the contrary - if unique usernames have value, then once someone has established a presence using that identity, it shouldn't be transferred to someone else. We've already seen the harms of domain squatting on expired registrations. I don't see any value in establishing a system that's going to allow people to take usernames that have a reputation built up by someone now dead. But I do see ample harm that can result from it.

For one thing, news doesn't always circulate evenly. You may not know someone has died immediately - so if a social media site allows redistribution of usernames after 12 months, it's real easy to imagine that being used for malicious purposes.

Social media sites really need to get away from the username model. Not sure what should replace it, but there's too many flaws inherent in allowing someone to build up a reputation / identity under a specific username and then turning that handle over to someone else.

Likewise, the first-come, first-serve model has been abused too. For many years Red Hat's twitter handle was not @redhat because someone else had squatted on the handle and would log in just often enough to keep it from being claimed under Twitter's policies. Had they pretended to be Red Hat it would've been reaped, but they just squatted on the username and kept it from being used. There's no reason a rando user should be able to claim a name that clearly isn't theirs.

And the whole common name problem, too. But taking, say @bobsmith away from the dead Bob Smith and handing it to somebody else isn't a good answer.

[paulryanrogers]

Business names and brands get resold. Trademarks expire. People learn. Life goes on.

Tech can provide a variety of measures like archiving the past lifetimes of a user name. Keeping old links to specific content alive whilst allowing reuse of the handle for someone else.

ICANN and platforms can moderate impersonation where it is malicious or causes genuine and widespread confusion.