It's amazing how rude Facebook, reddit, and in this case, greedy companies, can be. If he cared enough about anyone knowing who he was, he'd have told someone. This is just blatant disregard for a man's privacy.
I'd argue it's honoring him and the honorable life he seems to have led to pursue this investigation. Not to mention there may be a number people who will get peace from the knowledge that a friend or family member of theirs has passed. That seems like the kind of thing that a kind, caring person would want.
The idea that privacy can be violated like this solely because random Facebook users are interested in it and on the off-chance that family he hadn't interacted with in years might find some abstract comfort despite not being close at all is just incredibly bizarre.
At minimum, he was using a nickname.
You might think it's likely that he was keeping private his non-trail identity, but that is not the minimum explanation.
(FWIW, knowing about through-hiker culture, I don't think it's even the likely explanation, but that's just my opinion.)
I suspect those that didn't want to be on social media at all would have declined to be in the GoPro video for a longer discussion (as I likely would have, but I wouldn't have stopped a passing hiker doing a GoPro recording since that's more in the realm of a dashcam kind of thing). Fellow hikers tend to be respectful about such things.
Are there better ways to slip into the void than going into the wilderness without even a phone?
Better ways? A boat out into the ocean. Hiking out West or in Alaska. Or South America. Going deep into an unpopular cave. Hiking in a desert.
There are many, many places more "wild" than the popular hiking trail in Florida where he passed. If he'd wanted to slip away quietly, he seems like he had the means and the intelligence to have figured out how to do that successfully.
For example, we can read and even publish the private diaries and intimate correspondence of dead people, and the only privacy that needs to be accounted for is the interests of other parties in that correspondence and the (living) people talked about in these messages - but the dead don't care about anything any more, or at least that's the general assumption.
Subject to copyright, of course.
the rules around publishing (and reading) private diaries are the same for dead people as they are for living people, aren't they?
If I somehow legally obtain your diary and publish juicy exerpts and facts from it (publishing all of it would be restricted by copyright), then you may have grounds to sue me for violations of your privacy. If you're dead, your heirs can't do that, they can protect their rights (e.g. the inherited copyright), but not your privacy. It's similar for defamation; after you're dead, defaming you does not violate the rights of anyone - anyone living, that is.
In my local jurisdiction, I would not necessarily expect that to be protected by privacy law even if I was living (you may have grounds, but good luck!) - and it would be protected by copyright either way.
I don't think it's a reasonable presumption based only on the fact that he hadn't mentioned his legal/previous name that this person did not want to news of his death to reach people from elsewhere in his life.
Answer: They don't.
Privacy should be respected, even in death. Especially in a case like this.
He wrote whole notebooks, that doesn’t scream I’m walking into woods to die and don’t want anyone to know. It was the AT and then the FL that’s hardly the wilderness.
He could of just been a private person and never thought he see the hikers again so didn’t give to much away. He could have experienced some sort of mental illness and wasn’t in his right mind to know what he wanted.
The duty of respect for the dead also doesn't trump the needs of the living. If there are people out there waiting for his return, they should be told. I know somebody who's son disappeared, presumably in shame, after he failed out of college. For years and years it hurt her daily to not know . Eventually he got back in touch. If he had died before doing that, she would have deserved to know that her wait was over.
People seems to excuse themselves trampling on others privacy just so they can be part of a podcast. It's lame. Your family doesn't own you, you don't own them.
> If he cared enough
This bit is wrong. He might have cared and he seems to have gone to great lengths to protect his privacy.
Points of thought
1) Some people think dead people have zero rights. You are in or out on this.
2) We don't know for sure he wanted to disappear after his death.
When/If his true identity is discovered it will be a major let-down.
He'll become Kevin or Ben from Somewhere or Nowhere. And that'll be the end of it.