2024/Berlin/death
Death was a session at IndieWebCamp Berlin 2024.
Participants
- Nina Lassauer (Host)
- Sophie Brunner
- Roma Komarov
- James (https://jamesg.blog)
Notes
Reason for the Session: An internet friend died; what will happen with the online presence?
- What you could do: Credentials to a friend who you trust who takes care of it afterwards
- What about Link Rot? https://indieweb.org/2023/Nuremberg/linkrot
- Archiving personal websites
- Some websites have a way that lets you appoint someone to take care of your account after you pass away
- What happens to your domain name after you pass away -- what happens 100 years in the future.
- Big question: do you want to have your website available after you pass away? -- a question of consent.
- What happens if you use a free website host? -- this is something you should check when you set up your website.
- How does this relate to social media? If you syndicate to your own website, you would have a copy of everything. Many sites let you download your content as an archive -- you can go to settings and there is a different way to retrieve content for each platform. Usually you wait a few minutes / hours, then the company will send a link to your email with a ZIP archive of your content.
- Twitter provides statically built websites with search that you can use; or you can convert the site to an 11ty / another format of website.
- Problem for other people: preserving a friend's legacy.
- Would you have a post to be published when you pass away?
- If you have your content and your personal website in a folder then it's the only thing a person needs the access to; if somebody is on Social Media like Instagram and it's not documented, than it gets tough
- Using master passwords: if you give a password to a friend / loved one, they would have all of the access to everything.
- Designated people if you pass away who can take over things -- some platforms have features.
- People should think about what happens with your digital lives if you pass away. Does one still want their stuff to be available on their website?
- Is there an internet graveyard of gravestones that lets you go to the personal website of that person, read all of their old things, remember them.
- We have physical graveyards, could we have online graveyards. Is there such a thing as a digital funeral?
- In print, you can give dates to a newspaper when you pass away; what is the web equivalent?
- Is there a black banner for the picture when the person is deceased? Or can anything happen to the URL? Is there a post that goes out when you pass away? A family member could make a final post?
- Maybe make a collection of favorites posts? Or get quotes from friends?
- Create some drafts on the blog that can be published if you pass away.
- On closure: You need something saying that nothing will happen on this website anymore.
- Technically: Can we make sure that the website doesn't get shut down? Maybe friends can take care of it and check occasionally?
- What is with security? How can you longterm protect against attacks?
- How long do you want things to last?
- Print out your website / content; it could be donated to charity in the future and be more widely shared later.
- LiveJournal had a feature that let you print out a PDF of the entirety of the website.
- Do you want things to last? Technology constantly changes, the internet is complex. Maybe choose some things, that are most important, like the words. These can last longer than for example HTML. This stuff can pe printed and that will last forever.
- Digital life should also be part of a sustainable lifestyle: Do we really need to keep all our data forever? Can we get rid of some? The important stuff can be archived in a proper way.
Interesting links
- Google inactive account policy https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en
- Dynamicland https://dynamicland.org/