Live
- Two farmers killed due to lightning strike in Warangal
- Revanth, will you wear the saree now? Asks KTR
- Sharp flips ahead, trade cautiously
- JSP activist injured in stone pelting at Pithapuram during Sai Dharam Tej campaign
- Actor Shivaji appeals people to exercise their vote
- MyVoice: Views of our readers 6th May 2024
- KTR should wear saree and enjoy free bus ride: Revanth
- Bear spotted eating coconut in Nandyal, triggers panic
- PM Modi, Pawan Kalyan and Nara Lokesh to share one stage in Rajahmundry today
- Postal ballot starts today in Kadapa dist
Just In
To make the commercial use of digital remains more ethical, it is important to regulate the digital afterlife industry, says a team of experts from University of Oxford.
London: To make the commercial use of digital remains more ethical, it is important to regulate the digital afterlife industry, says a team of experts from University of Oxford.
From live-streaming funerals to online memorial pages and even chat-bots that use people's social media footprints' to act as online ghosts, the digital afterlife industry has become big business, but the boundaries around acceptable afterlife activity and grief exploitation, have become increasingly blurry, the researchers noted.
In the study, published in the journal Nature, the researchers noted that online remains should be viewed in the same way as the physical human body, and treated with care and respect rather than manipulated for commercial gain.
The paper suggests that regulation is the best way to achieve this.The guidelines used to manage human remains in archaeological exhibitions could be used as a framework to regulate the growing industry, the researchers said.
In recommending a framework for regulation the paper identified four digital afterlife industries -- information management services, posthumous messaging services, online memorial services and re-creation services -- which use a person's digital footprint to generate new messages replicating the online behaviour of the deceased.
While this service has yet to be adopted by mainstream technology giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, the paper found that the services provide the highest level of online presence post-mortem.
It is therefore both at risk of exploiting the grief of the loved ones of the deceased and the greatest threat to an individual's afterlife privacy, the researchers said.
"Regardless of whether they are the sole legal owner of the deceased's data -- and irrespective of whether the opinion of their next of kin,
with regulation, DAI (digital afterlife industry) firms would have to abide by certain conventions, such as, preventing hate speech and the commercial exploitation of memorialised profiles," said Professor Luciana Floridi of Oxford Internet Institute, an Oxford University department dedicated to the social science of the Internet.
© 2024 Hyderabad Media House Limited/The Hans India. All rights reserved. Powered by hocalwire.com