Hey, I'm Candice Lib, and you're listening to Icy Why Am I.

In case you missed it, it's Please Podcasts about Internet Culture.

And today we have a special treat.

Today we're bringing you an episode from Slate's What Next TVD Podcast.

In this episode, Slate Senior Producer and Guest Host, Shanna Roth, and reporter Mia Sasato who covers tech companies platforms and

users discuss Google's scam obituary problem and what happens when your loved

one's death becomes clickbait.

And without further ado, here's the show. Beth Maiser and Brian Vastig were very close. They'd been good friends,

were even married for a bit, and they were also

advocates for chronic fatigue syndrome, an illness that Beth had struggled with for

most of her life. But in late 2023, their friends began receiving alarming news about both of them.

Friends of the couple started seeing news online that said sadly both of them had passed away.

That's me as Sato who writes for The Verge.

And it was kind of spreading within the friend group.

At least four people had heard the news online that they had both passed away.

And it was obviously this devastating kind of like double whammy of losing two friends at once.

As with most deaths, obituaries started to post online,

but friends of Brian and Beth noticed there was something a little off

about what they were reading.

The obituaries would say, you know,

Beth and Brian sadly have passed away.

There were kind of across different websites,

...