麻豆影院

As our lives go digital, Jed Brubaker is studying what happens to all that data after we die.听

If Jed Brubaker were to die tomorrow, his husband, Steven, would become the steward of his Facebook page.

His profile picture would remain as it is today, a neat headshot of the 36-year-old assistant professor sporting a goatee, pale blue glasses and a slightly mischievous smile. His cover image might be switched to the lake in Utah where he鈥檇 like to have his ashes spread. Above that picture would be a single word, 鈥淩emembering,鈥� carefully chosen to alert visitors that he was gone but, in this sacred online space, not forgotten.

Brubaker has painstakingly thought through this scenario, not because he is obsessed with death or Facebook, but because it鈥檚 his job to think about it.

As one of the few scholars in the nation to study what happens to our data 鈥� including our social media presence 鈥� after we die, he鈥檚 been instrumental in developing Facebook鈥檚 Legacy Contact, the feature that enables users to determine the postmortem fate of their profile. Now, as a founding faculty member in CU 麻豆影院鈥檚 new information science department, he鈥檚 working to further improve the ways people experience death online, via new algorithms, apps and features designed to sensitively acknowledge a fact tech companies have tended to ignore: People die.

鈥淚n social computing, companies think about designing for all kinds of different aspects of our lives 鈥� wedding anniversaries, birthdays, you name it,鈥� said Brubaker. 鈥淏ut they have overlooked perhaps the most profound one of all, which is when those lives come to an end.鈥�

That鈥檚 where he comes in.

鈥淚鈥檓 that guy,鈥� he said. 鈥淚鈥檓 the death guy.鈥�

Pathways

Brubaker鈥檚 circuitous career path wound through the arts, psychology and tech before leading to a nascent field that manages to incorporate all of the above.

Growing up in Utah, where he was an avid dancer, he dreamed of a career in theater. But his empathetic nature drew him toward psychology. He earned that degree at University of Utah while doing web design on the side, a gig that detoured him into the tech startup world for five years.

Once that life ceased to fulfill him, he pursued a master鈥檚 in communication, culture and technology at Georgetown University. When his adviser suggested he get a PhD in information science, he shot him a blank look: 鈥淚 said, 鈥榃hat is information science?鈥欌��

The field, which explores the messy intersection of social science and computer science, seemed a perfect fit.

鈥淚 tend to gravitate toward the stuff that doesn鈥檛 make sense yet, where the fundamental research question is WTF?鈥� he said.

In 2009, while working toward his PhD at the University of California Irvine, he was scrolling through the Facebook page of an acquaintance when he sensed something odd.

Posts on her 鈥渨all,鈥� or digital message board, seemed to come mostly on birthdays and carried a somber tone. A few more minutes of scrolling confirmed his sinking feeling.

She was dead, but Facebook had continued to send out birthday reminders and advance her age in her profile. Online, she was 23. In the flesh, she never made it to 20.

鈥淚t was eerie,鈥� he recalls.

Not long after that, Facebook launched a well-meaning algorithm called 鈥淩econnect鈥� which sent a message to users encouraging them to 鈥渟hare the latest news鈥� with Facebook friends who hadn鈥檛 logged on for a while. The launch, shortly before Halloween, was a PR disaster, as many users got messages nudging them to post on the walls of people who hadn鈥檛 logged on for good reason. They鈥檇 died.

鈥淚t was a technical screw up with very deep social consequences, but how could Facebook have done any differently?鈥� Brubaker recalls. 鈥淚f people are dead, they can鈥檛 remove their own accounts, and if Facebook doesn鈥檛 know they are dead, how can they exclude them from these algorithms? It was a bigger problem than anyone realized at the time.鈥�

As Brubaker watched heartbroken family members express their frustration on social media 鈥� one woman was asked to contact a friend who had recently been murdered; another was encouraged to post on the wall of her deceased son 鈥� he arrived at his next research project.

He would spend the next five years interviewing hundreds of social media users about their encounters with postmortem accounts.

鈥淗e saw this issue emerging and took it upon himself to completely redefine a new research area,鈥� said Gillian Hayes, a professor of informatics at UC Irvine and Brubaker鈥檚 adviser at the time.

Digital Tombstone听

Almost overwhelmingly, people he interviewed about their interaction with the pages of dead loved ones said they liked having a sort of 鈥渄igital tombstone鈥� where they could post messages, share stories and grieve.

But privacy settings often had sad unintended consequences.

At the time, Facebook managed member deaths 鈥� if it learned of them at all 鈥� by 鈥渕emorializing鈥� or freezing their account. The profile still existed for people to post on, but no one had access to control it or manage it.

In some cases, adolescent users died suddenly, leaving behind a profile photo their parents found objectionable (a party pic, a snarky cartoon). When loved ones asked to have the photo changed, Facebook 鈥� lacking any idea what the deceased person would have wanted 鈥� would decline. In one case, a grieving father who was not friends with his son on Facebook asked if he could be added as a friend so he could participate in the remembrances. He couldn鈥檛 be.

Once the company got wind of Brubaker鈥檚 research, it enlisted his help, not only to provide insight into the problem, but to help solve it.

In February 2015, when Brubaker was still a student, Facebook launched Legacy Contact, allowing users to designate a steward of their account who could write a final post, change or update profile or cover photos, add friends and even download photos to share with loved ones not on Facebook.

The carefully chosen word 鈥淩emembering鈥� would gently indicate the person had passed, while inviting visitors to interact.

鈥淚t can often be so hard for young researchers to get the outside world to care about their research,鈥� said Hayes. 鈥淭o have Facebook launch this product based on his research while he was still writing his dissertation was just amazing.鈥�

A Kinder, Gentler Wake

Brubaker continues to work with Facebook to study and refine Legacy Contact, and his research has inspired other social media companies to explore how they deal with user deaths.

At his Identity Lab on the CU campus, Brubaker also has begun exploring other challenges related to online discourse about life, identity and death.

Because social media enables us to rediscover acquaintances we haven鈥檛 spoken with for decades, for instance, we are now subjected to more individual deaths than any generation that has come before us. That raises sticky questions.

鈥淗ow are you supposed to grieve the death of someone you would have otherwise forgotten?鈥� he said, noting that when people grieve too openly online, they鈥檙e often accused of 鈥渞ubbernecking鈥� or 鈥済rief tourism.鈥�

In one recent study co-authored with Katie Gach, a doctoral student at CU鈥檚 ATLAS Institute, the duo analyzed thousands of online comments responding to the deaths of Prince, David Bowie and actor Alan Rickman. They found that commenters routinely mocked others. Some even dissed the dead.

鈥淭hese people were fighting in what was essentially an online wake. This would never happen in a normal, prenewsfeed world,鈥� said Brubaker, who believes subtle changes could be made to algorithms so the most toxic online comments (which tend to get the most clicks) don鈥檛 necessarily rise to the top.

I hope death is a little bit kinder to people鈥�

He and his students are also mulling outside-the-box ideas that could someday extend the way we interact with the dead via their data.

Want to go to grandma鈥檚 favorite restaurant and order her favorite dish on her birthday? Maybe you could tap into her Yelp data to find out what it was.

Missing an old friend? Maybe you could summon a data-driven, holographic representation of her.

Brubaker knows this sounds creepy. But there was a time when photographs or videos of the dead seemed creepy to the living. As technology changes, we change too.

鈥淲hether it will be acceptable or not all depends on how it is designed,鈥� he said.

How would he like to see his own memory live on?

鈥淚 just hope that as a result of my work, death is a little bit kinder to people.鈥�

听

Illustration by Josh Cochran/ Photo courtesy Jed Brubaker