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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the bring-out-your-dead dept.

Submitted via IRC for FatPhil

New analysis by academics from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), part of the University of Oxford, predicts the dead may outnumber the living on Facebook within fifty years, a trend that will have grave implications for how we treat our digital heritage in the future.

The analysis predicts that, based on 2018 user levels, at least 1.4 billion members will die before 2100. In this scenario, the dead could outnumber the living by 2070. If the world's largest social network continues to expand at current rates, however, the number of deceased users could reach as high as 4.9 billion before the end of the century.

"These statistics give rise to new and difficult questions around who has the right to all this data, how should it be managed in the best interests of the families and friends of the deceased and its use by future historians to understand the past," said lead author Carl Öhman, a doctoral candidate at the OII.

"On a societal level, we have just begun asking these questions and we have a long way to go. The management of our digital remains will eventually affect everyone who uses social media, since all of us will one day pass away and leave our data behind. But the totality of the deceased user profiles also amounts to something larger than the sum of its parts. It is, or will at least become, part of our global digital heritage."

Co-author David Watson, also a DPhil student at the OII, explained: "Never before in history has such a vast archive of human behaviour and culture been assembled in one place. Controlling this archive will, in a sense, be to control our history. It is therefore important that we ensure that access to these historical data is not limited to a single for-profit firm. It is also important to make sure that future generations can use our digital heritage to understand their history."

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190427104813.htm

Carl J Öhman, David Watson. Are the dead taking over Facebook? A Big Data approach to the future of death online. Big Data & Society, 2019; 6 (1): 205395171984254 DOI: 10.1177/2053951719842540


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:57AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:57AM (#840680)
    I think their estimates of FB's longevity are ridiculously optimistic.
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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 08 2019, @09:06AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday May 08 2019, @09:06AM (#840695) Journal

    yeah exactly. from the speed with which MySpace collapsed it is possible for these social media companies to die in 5 years.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @11:26AM (#840721)

    Mod up. Be more productive worrying about some space aliens nuking us from the orbit.

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 08 2019, @03:13PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 08 2019, @03:13PM (#840806) Journal

    Look at Microsoft's longevity. IBM's longevity. AT&T's longevity. Oracle.

    Now Facebook?

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @06:49PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @06:49PM (#840935)
      MS, IBM and others sell valuable goods and have customers who need those goods. FB sells nothing to its production body, and FB's business hinges on the hope that people will continue to use FB.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2019, @07:14PM (#840944)

    :) 50 years?
    More like 5. The tumbleweeds of MySpace and GeoCities are already calling. Sheeple are slowly awakening and moving on.