Who Owns the Data of the Dead? Challenging Necrocapitalism in the Age of Death Tech - Dr. Jean Linis-Dinco

🗣️“Under capitalism, the dead are not revived for memory or commemoration. No matter what techbros tell us. The dead are revived for commodification. Necrocapitalism is about monetising the emotional labour of mourning and redirecting it into computational systems that can be scaled and sold,”

says Dr Jean Linis-Dinco, Manushya Foundation’s Digital Rights Advisor during the session hosted by NetMission.Asia at EngageMedia’s DRAPAC 2025. The session revolved around death tech and asked the question as to who owns the data of the dead. Jean also pushed back against many of the ideas that came about during the session.

“There is no way we can regulate a technology that shouldn’t exist”. Jean argues how whitewashing technologies like this under the banner of regulation converts invasive practices in the grammar of consumer protection. Instead, Jean pushes for a broader societal reckoning contending that the real work lies in questioning why corporations are eager to harvest our most intimate moments and why we accept the premise that death can be turned into a marketable service.

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#WeAreManushyan ♾️ Equal Human Beings