ABSTRACT
‘Big tech’ refers to those technology companies most responsible for driving societal change, with Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (GAFA) most prominent among them. Of these, Google and Facebook are the ‘industry leaders’ at the juncture where death meets digital, proactively engaging with the reality and the dilemma of posthumously persistent digital material. These corporations are largely unhindered by any established coherent legal or regulatory frameworks that could guide the handling of, or responsibility for, the data of the dead. As such, big tech companies have rapidly assumed a position as viewfinder, lens and frame for death. Facebook in particular mediates death’s visibility, bringing the dead and living together in closer proximity than they have existed since Philippe Ariès’s ‘tamed death’, but they are not alone. Multiple online service providers play host to digital ‘ghosts’, both driving and providing the ground for the emergent re-ritualisation of death and mourning online. In some cases, social media companies may also profit from the retention of dead users’ data, fuelling the modern commercialisation of death. This chapter illustrates and critically examines big tech companies’ role in making modern death truly ‘spectacular’.
