We spend our lives generating data — photos, voice notes, shared folders, family chats. But
what happens to all that when we die?
On most social platforms, your data remains locked under corporate control, governed by vague memorialization policies and often inaccessible even to your closest family. Facebook, for example, assigns a "Memorialized Account" status to a deceased user's page, allowing only limited edits — and only if the user appointed a Legacy Contact while still alive. Unless someone had the password, the account becomes effectively frozen. In this setup, most platforms treat your legacy as theirs, regardless of what your will might say. For grief-tech and family-tech startups, that answer is no longer acceptable.
Another shift is also underway: from personal data to shared memory, and from private accounts to collaborative archives. Think about how many conversations you have across messaging apps, involving people from different countries and generations. When memories span borders, cultures, and family lines, who has the right to access, delete, or edit them?
The law isn't ready, but families already are
In traditional inheritance law, assets have clear owners. In family tech, the situation is murkier. Rather than focusing on everyday chats — like coordinating your parents' golden anniversary dinner — consider the more complex example of a shared family tree, a feature increasingly common in family platforms. Six people across four continents might edit that tree. A memorial page of someone within that tree might include both deceased and living relatives. One sibling wants to preserve, another wants to forget.
Families frequently disagree over competing versions of the same story. Who gets to write the "official" biography of a grandparent — and whose truth should prevail?
Without clear data ownership protocols, grief-tech platforms walk a tightrope between privacy, consent, and emotional conflict. The law isn't ready to provide definitive answers, but families are already asking the hard questions.
The tech challenge behind shared memory
Building a digital infrastructure for memory involves much more than cloud storage. It demands careful coordination, explicit consent, and cross-border legal compliance.
While the term grief-tech often refers to AI tools simulating the deceased (so that you can "talk" to them), another critical aspect of the field is managing digital legacy, with platforms that serve as long-term archives for shared family data. These platforms face a unique set of technical constraints.
First, they must implement version control systems that track authorship and revision history while enabling respectful disagreement, since shared memories often evoke strong emotions. Second, they must detect jurisdictions dynamically, applying the appropriate local data laws based on user location.
Third, they must offer nuanced access governance, defining who can view, edit, or delete shared content, while keeping those permissions intuitive and flexible. And finally, they must prioritize secure design, especially for elderly and underage users. Login systems, interfaces, and communication tools must be not only protected from phishing and spoofing, but also simple enough for people unfamiliar with digital security.
As one privacy advocate put it, people aren't looking for another storage service. They want to feel safe sharing how their parents met — and to know that memory won't end up in the wrong hands.
These technical layers form the invisible foundation of grief-tech. Without them, trust erodes quickly — and often irreversibly.
Dead people have no data rights. Yet
In the EU, GDPR protects living individuals. But once you die, your rights effectively vanish — even if your private life continues to exist in the cloud. This legal void creates real problems. If a family platform stores a memorial page about a deceased person that includes data about a living relative, legal obligations may apply unevenly.
Most platforms, confronted with this uncertainty, default to protecting themselves, not honoring user intent. Wills that mention digital assets are routinely ignored. Family members seeking access are often denied.
It's not that platforms are inherently malicious, but the fear of liability pushes them to shut everyone out. Until legislation evolves, your data might survive, but it may never truly belong to its intended recipients.
What grief-tech needs next
To grow responsibly, grief-tech needs a few "musts" to go far beyond offering cloud space.
It must embed legal clarity around posthumous data rights, treating digital memory with the same seriousness as physical property. It must establish transparent rules for collaborative authorship, giving families fair, traceable ways to manage disagreements over shared content.
It must offer compliance tools that adapt in real time to the laws of different jurisdictions. It must prioritize human-centered design — especially for people navigating grief — rather than optimizing for clicks or engagement.
And above all, it must implement ethical safeguards to support families at their most vulnerable, helping them manage consent, inheritance, and emotional memory with care.
This has nothing to do with nostalgia or sentimentality. The focus lies in justice, continuity, and protecting the right to remember — and to be remembered — on one's own terms.
Digital memory carries emotional and cultural weight and deserves thoughtful treatment in both design and law. It's a matter of responsibility, not reminiscence. Without clear safeguards, the most personal parts of our lives risk being lost, misused, or silenced.