Commodifying death: Thanatechnologies as platform workers in the digital afterlife economy
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Bina48 is the most ambitious manifestation of thanatechnologies, AI systems that digitally resurrect deceased individuals. Online platforms harvest and assemble data, photos, and personal digital effects to reanimate the individual via AI and reap the profits that come from their ongoing interactions with living users. The profiles of deceased individuals are directly owned and mobilized by the platform itself. Building on digital labor scholarship that shows how platforms extract value from living users, thanatechnologies represent a new kind of post-life laborer in the online economy, transforming grief and memory into exchange-value through emotional labor, social maintenance, and content generation. The specter of the zombie highlights how this digital labor intersects with histories of racial and gendered exploitation, particularly visible in the case of Bina48, where a black woman’s identity becomes a site of technological performance and commodification. Post-life laborers reveal contemporary understandings of labor, productivity, and the ongoing commodification of personal identity, affect, and sociality.
Source: New Media & Society
Author: Jasmine Erdener
Institution: Koç University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,900
OpenAlex ID: W4413685813