A dead friend seemed to contact me on Facebook. The truth was sadder | Akin Olla

Social media ghosts' are increasingly common - and platforms have an incentive to keep those profiles up if they drive engagement

I burst into tears when my friend tagged me in another Facebook post this morning. My friend died in 2021. The bot or scammer that had taken over his account was using it to promote weight-loss pills, which felt particularly egregious considering my friend had lost weight before his sudden death; it was as if the bot had scraped his profile for the most marketable details before taking his place.

This was not the first time I'd been contacted on social media from beyond the grave. Earlier this year, my best friend messaged me; that time, too, it was deeply unsettling, since the last time I'd seen him, he was smiling at me from his open casket. As terrible as these uncanny experiences were for me, what really broke my heart was thinking of how my friends' mothers were likely experiencing the same thing.