Dai Xiaoling

Surrounded by green hills and white cranes flying, the picture is accompanied by distant background music, tombstones, candles, flowers, incense and so on...... In recent years, online memorial activities have risen, and the paperless memorial form has become a new atmosphere of the Qingming Festival.

The so-called online memorial service simply means that the traditional sacrificial ceremony is moved online. People can create virtual memorial halls and cemeteries through special memorial websites, apps, mini programs, official accounts or social platforms, and carry out sacrificial activities such as offering flowers, offering incense, and leaving messages.

The reporter of "Rule of Law Daily" found that more and more people choose to express their condolences to their deceased relatives and friends through online memorials. In their view, the online memorial service is a new way of sacrificing in the "Internet +" era, breaking the limitations of time and space, and expressing their thoughts anytime and anywhere. However, at the same time, there are also many problems in online memorials, such as the construction of the museum and the inflated price of virtual offerings.

On a number of online memorial platforms, the reporter noticed that the registration process is not complicated, and only need to fill in the name, gender, photo, date of birth and death, relationship with the deceased, epitaph, and mission profile to create a memorial.

When creating a memorial content, you can fill in a fake name and picture at will, and even check the date of birth and death as the day of the test, you can immediately create a worship page, and it can be searched on the public page without any review steps. There are also some platforms that have a private option, and you can check "Make it a private library". The reporter randomly picked a picture in the album and uploaded it, and it also successfully passed the review.

Some interviewees bluntly said that the original intention of online memorials is to build a bridge of thoughts for the living and the dead, but because of the lax review, the platform is easy to be used by individual people as a means of spoofing and a way to seek revenge. "The software is not updated in the future, resulting in an unsuitable screen", "Suddenly a network error is displayed for several days", "The software has been used for several years, and a lot of money has been paid, but now it can't be opened"...... Many netizens left messages complaining about the problems of the online memorial platform.

After the creation of the memorial hall, the reporter found that there are many categories of electronic offerings, including candles, tributes, flowers, fruits, special dishes, gifts, books, musical instruments, clothing, home appliances, villas, etc. The reporter roughly counted nearly 20 categories, covering all aspects of life, and there are different items in each category, almost a thousand.

But the price of these electronic offerings is not cheap. The reporter noticed that the cheapest is incense or paper money priced at 3 yuan, and only 0 products are priced at 0 yuan, and the rest such as flowers are from 0 yuan, dozens of yuan of incense candles, household appliances and furniture, hundreds of yuan of luxury villas, private jets, etc.

Ms. Li, a resident of Beijing, agrees. A few years ago, she created a memorial hall for the old people buried at sea, and the platform will launch high-priced virtual offerings on every important festival, a virtual luxury villa is sold for hundreds of yuan, and the platform recently launched a limited-time "luxury sacrifice package" priced at more than 1000 yuan, "which is more expensive than buying paper sacrifices offline."

"Some platforms claim that 'it is true filial piety to let relatives use the best products in the scenery over there', as if you are not filial if you don't buy it. These actions not only go against the original purpose of the sacrifice, but also hurt people's feelings for the deceased. Ms. Li said.

The reporter noticed that many online memorial platforms have launched membership services, and you can enjoy more privileges after opening a membership, such as free use of some high-level offerings, and an exclusive memorial page. However, according to the guidelines of the interviewees, the reporter tried to find that some platforms are not smooth to use, promising services that can only be enjoyed by members, and even the functions have not been opened.

After Ms. Li opened a membership, she found that she did not enjoy more rights and interests than before, and the membership points promised by the platform were exchanged for tokens, and she could not even find the entrance to use. "With such a user experience, the platform has to increase the membership fee every year, which is simply harvesting 'filial piety'."

Regarding the problems existing in online memorials, Li Jin, a lawyer at Zhejiang Haiyin Law Firm, suggested that the platform should establish a strict review mechanism to conduct a comprehensive review of user registration information and memorial content to ensure that the information is true and reliable, and eliminate the phenomenon of false information and living sacrifices from the source through real-name authentication and uploading death certificates; For some value-added services, the price must be clearly marked, so that users can choose independently and avoid excessive consumption; It is also necessary to use advanced encryption technology to prevent user information leakage and ensure that users can remember the deceased with peace of mind on the platform. (Rule of Law Daily reporter Han Dandong)