A Year On, Twitter Still Doesn’t Know How To Deal With Its Dead

When Twitter threatened to automatically close inactive accounts, it sparked a furious response from users who feared the accounts of their dead friends and family were about to disappear forever. Almost a year to the day since Twitter backed down and promised to work on a way to memorialize accounts, it’s still to decide how to deal with its millions of dead account holders.

Last November, Twitter said it was implementing a new initiative that could see accounts automatically closed if users hadn’t signed in for six months, freeing up millions of usernames in the process.

However, one thing the company failed to consider was the feelings of friends and family members of dead account holders, who take comfort in going back through timelines and reading tweets from deceased users.

Drew Olanoff, a former TechCrunch writer, wrote at the time of Twitter’s announcement that he feared the company’s new policy would extinguish his dead father’s account, robbing him of the ability to go back and read his tweets. “I still read his tweets, and from time to time I still share them with you,” wrote Olanoff, whose father had died four years previous. “It’s my way, odd or not, of remembering him. Keeping his spirit alive. His tweets are timestamped moments that he shared with the world.”

Twitter hastily backed down, announcing within days that “we’ve heard you on the impact that this would have on the account of the deceased” and that “this was a miss on our part”.

“We will not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts,” Twitter added.

A year later, however, Twitter has yet to implement such a system. Twitter declined to comment, merely pointing us to the statements it made a year ago. The accounts of the dead remain untouched – and that can cause problems of its own.

Desecrating the dead

The problem with leaving the accounts of the dead to remain active is that they can become a magnet for abuse, especially if the deceased is a high-profile person.

A recent BBC documentary, The Trials of Oscar Pistorius, highlighted how the victim – Pistorius’s girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp – had been tweeting in the hours leading up to her death. What it didn’t highlight was some of the sick replies to her tweets that were made after she’d been murdered, and still remain visible on her account today.

The account of British TV presenter, Caroline Flack, was similarly targeted for abusive tweets after she committed suicide, having previously been charged for the assault of her boyfriend.

Leaving the accounts of the dead open for the trolls to attack can be every bit as problematic as automatically removing them.

Twitter policies

Twitter does allow family members to request that accounts of dead users be removed from the site. “In the event of the death of a Twitter user, we can work with a person authorized to act on behalf of the estate, or with a verified immediate family member of the deceased to have an account deactivated,” the company’s policy states.

That is by no means an immediate process, with Twitter requiring “information about the deceased, a copy of your ID, and a copy of the deceased’s death certificate” before it will deactivate accounts.

Even then, it’s an all or nothing approach. Either have the account removed entirely and deprive everyone of the ability to look back at past tweets, or leave it open at the mercy of the trolls.

That’s where memorialized accounts come into play. Facebook allows account holders to appoint someone to look after their account in the event of their death. A memorialized account is marked with the word “remembering”, to ensure people know the account holder has passed away, but also allows friends and family to post memories of the deceased account holder on their timeline, with the legacy contact able to remove and report anything that is inappropriate.

After a year of trying, Twitter still offers nothing of this sort.

Right to be forgotten?

Of course, there will also be people who are uncomfortable with their social media profile outliving them, who’d prefer to have their account deleted in the event of their death.

This, again, is an option on Facebook. The social network’s memorialization settings allow users to request their account is deleted upon their death, removing all of their posts, photos and comments permanently. Facebook enacts the request when the appointed legacy contact informs them of the account holder’s death.

Twitter offers no such feature. You can’t declare your wish to have your account removed in the event of your death or, indeed, left open. It’s left to the discretion of your friends and family.

There’s no doubt this is a highly sensitive area that needs to be implemented with care, but a year after this problem came to the fore, Twitter is still struggling to deal with its dead.