The Dead May Outnumber the Living on Facebook Within 50 Years (eurekalert.org) 132
Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute predict the dead may outnumber the living on Facebook within 50 years -- with as many as 4.9 billion no-longer-living users before the end of the century.
And then what? "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 Ohman, a doctoral candidate at the OII.... "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... Facebook should invite historians, archivists, archaeologists and ethicists to participate in the process of curating the vast volume of accumulated data that we leave behind as we pass away. This is not just about finding solutions that will be sustainable for the next couple of years, but possibly for many decades ahead."
Ohman adds that the issues don't end there, since Facebook "is merely an example of what awaits any platform with similar connectivity and global reach."
And then what? "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 Ohman, a doctoral candidate at the OII.... "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... Facebook should invite historians, archivists, archaeologists and ethicists to participate in the process of curating the vast volume of accumulated data that we leave behind as we pass away. This is not just about finding solutions that will be sustainable for the next couple of years, but possibly for many decades ahead."
Ohman adds that the issues don't end there, since Facebook "is merely an example of what awaits any platform with similar connectivity and global reach."
Them that die'll be the lucky ones (Score:3)
Reminded me of this: "Before an hour's out, ye'll laugh upon the other side. Them that die'll be the lucky ones.” (c) R.L. Stevenson, "Treasure Island"
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Yeah, Facebook seems like the perfect place for the Night King - chock full of mindless ghouls just waiting for someone to lead them.
Winter is here.
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Brain-dead... (Score:1)
Sometimes it feels like that already.
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Sometimes it feels like that already.
There are definitely already more dead people than living people. So yes.
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source [strangerdimensions.com].
*On* facebook in 50 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
The notion that facebook will exist as anything more than an archaic dataset in 50 years is laughable.
Re: *On* facebook in 50 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook is in a weird position. On one hand, it's so big and popular that it's hard to see it failing.
On the other hand, it's so problematic and dystopian that nobody wants to reinvent it, so it doesn't have a likely direct replacement.
Too big to fail, too awful to compete against.
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Facebook is in a weird position. On one hand, it's so big and popular that it's hard to see it failing.
On the other hand, it's so problematic and dystopian that nobody wants to reinvent it, so it doesn't have a likely direct replacement.
Too big to fail, too awful to compete against.
Don't kid yourself. There's no shortage of people that would like to reinvent and replace Facebook either so they can be the rulers of the new dystopian establishment or because they want to get rid of the dystopian establishment. If they first was easy, it would have been done by now. Chances are that any up and coming competitor would just be bought out before they had a chance to truly compete like we're seen so far. For the second, is it even possible to come up with a viable non-dystopian version? If i
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Is there any value in those old datasets?
Memories. Of an online community that was a lot more organized. Sigh.
71541,3346.
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I actually find a lot of value in them- and so does the internet Wayback machine.
This is another reason I don't do social media (Score:5, Informative)
When a friend died and I tried to inform LinkedIn, they saw fit to suggest that I might want to do a mountain of work to support my information. They thought I might want to go further out of my way to help them maintain their data and their profitability. That's absurd. They can think again.
Re:This is another reason I don't do social media (Score:4, Informative)
It's fine, LinkedIn mostly is call list for 3rd party recruiters, the negatives of being on it far outweigh any positives. Let those jerk-offs have a polluted pile of bad data to work from...
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Re: This is another reason I don't do social media (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, man, I am going to start work on a shitposting bot to carry on my legacy. Prepay a few decades of a cloud service so it is hard to kill.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Er ... bollocks. That will cost them money, so it ain't gonna happen.
I used to say the same about MySpace (Score:1)
Seems like they found a way to solve that problem.
The Posting Dead (Score:3)
Coming this fall, by AMC.
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"You Might Already Be An Extra!"
I think the living are already outnumbered (Score:5, Interesting)
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Welcome to the *real* Zombie Apocalypse!
What kind of school is that? (Score:2)
Just curious.
Re:What kind of school is that? (Score:5, Informative)
It's named after the comma.
Re:What kind of school is that? (Score:4, Funny)
I just presumed it was an IRC server for people who wear shirts with button-down collars.
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It's actually an online academy where ranchers can earn certificates on safely guiding their cattle across rivers and streams.
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But they end up spending their time playing Oregon Trail.
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Re:What kind of school is that? (Score:4, Informative)
According to Wikipedia:
"The Oxford Internet Institute is a multi-disciplinary department of social and computer science dedicated to the study of information, communication, and technology, and is part of the Social Sciences Division of the University of Oxford, England. "
50 Years? (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook will be a pure archive by then. Each era, folks seem to forget that the latest and greatest social media format wasn't the first, nor will it be the last.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
To me, Facebook has always looked clunky, and in rapid need of a more elegant replacement. But then again, from the perspective of advertising and marketing, it makes sense that it still exists the way it does. The things a replacement would 'fix' would either make it less advertiser friendly, or else turn it into AOL with the adverts.
But within a couple of decades, Facebook will most likely sound like 'CompuServe' when someone says it - sort of cool in abstract, but just old and obsolete culturally.
Ryan Fenton
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Maybe, but the problem with coming up with a replacement for Facebook is that all of ones' friends are on Facebook, and very few to none of them are on (whatever the new hotness is) -- so after signing up and playing around with the new thing for a few days, people will end up going back to Facebook because that's there their friends are and therefore where their interesting content is.
Network effects are huge in the social-media space -- to the extent where it's very likely that the only company that can s
Re: 50 Years? (Score:3)
You answered your own question.
Facebook is for old people. The next social media should target teenagers who don't want to hang with old people.
The Facebook will buy them too
Click bait article (Score:2)
There's very little chance FaceBook will be around in 50 years; even 5 years is probably a stretch.
Facebook is not going anywhere (Score:2)
There's very little chance FaceBook will be around in 50 years; even 5 years is probably a stretch.
There is a very good chance Facebook will be gone in 50 years, at least as a standalone company. There is almost zero chance they will be gone in 5. Large companies very rarely disappear that quickly. Most likely fate is that they get bought by one or more companies someday in the future because that's the fate of most large companies in the long run. Bankruptcy is possible but even if that happens the company and/or its assets will shamble on well into the future. Facebook also will probably run into
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I said that 10 years ago, and now I'm being invited to my 30th high school reunion over facebook, after using facebook to help organize my 20th high school reunion.
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People who use the word "sheeple" use the word in the context they do by learning it from people they hang out with, almost like they were a herd... of sheep that say "sheeple."
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It's Faceboot. They're run by overtly evil Corporate Progressive nazi assholes from the notoriously douchey San Francisco Bay Area. What did you expect?
Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
Only the dead can know peace from this evil.
Re: Facebook (Score:2)
And lost all friends. Happened to me. Still, I don't regret it.
And if people could not be bothered to send me an email or at least Whatsapp message then perhaps those relationships were not so important after all. Well, whatever. Screaming for years "it's a trap" did not help so I stopped...
So what's the flip side? (Score:2)
If the dead eventually outnumber the living on Facebook .... does that mean the living will envy the dead?
What about the Right to be Forgotten? (Score:1)
At least in Europe there seems to be a surge of legislative attention to this, though (as far as I know) purely for its temporarily living citizens.
Assuming such archives survive all the new laws, will there be fair use cases? What about for Famous People? Will we see changes to copyright to accomodate such use? Is an archival account of a person copyrightable? Who owns the copyright? Sure, Facebook has the right for certain admittedly expansive uses of our data, but no legal doctrine I know of dissolves an
prior art (Score:1)
Works for Mormon and Scientologist statititions
and all it takes is one hit to the night king to d (Score:2)
and all it takes is one hit to the night king to drop them all.
Nothing to worry about (Score:2)
It is therefore important that we ensure that access to these historical data is not limited to a single for-profit firm.
From Facebook's track record on data security & privacy, there absolutely nothing to worry about there mate.
Not a problem (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody saw that Orville episode, too (Score:2)
In the not-to-distant future, the internet will be full of content which was created by dead people. Perhaps future generations will create a simulation of 2019 and wonder what the hell was wrong with all of us.
I really don't care. I'll be dead.
Within 50 Years... (Score:2)
Can we make this happen by 2020? (Score:2)
ZombieBook (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people on Facebook are dead already, at least on the inside.
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What? No way! There's WAY too much fun you can have with Facebook.
Create your own persona and be whoever you always wanted to be! Rub shoulders with the greatest minds in your field (Photoshop makes it possible for you too!) and show the world who you should have been all the time. Share pictures of you on your expensive yacht and from your latest freeclimbing trip. No worries, you neither have to go to the sea- nor the mountainside, find a picture that you think should be you and there you go.
Facebook and
obligatory xkcd reference (Score:5, Informative)
i can't believe that nobody has posted this yet
And that someone turned Randall's careful analysis into a scientific paper some 6 years later.
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hold it right there! (Score:2)
supposedly those people set their privacy settings while still being alive (you know; everybody can see my posts, only friends, or friends of friends, etc).
that should not change after they die, why would that suddenly give anybody the right to make everything public?
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that's a good point, they should stop doing that, no matter if the person is dead or alive.
I see dead people (Score:2)
...on Facebook
"Bring out your Dead" (Score:4, Funny)
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That was hardly original to them, but to the black death in the 14th century. Reality was ahead of its time, apparently.
The dead already outnumber us (Score:2)
The dead already outnumber the living in science, literature, and on earth in general.
Big surprise (Score:2)
The dead outnumber the living everywhere.
Accounts or people? (Score:2)
The dead accounts may outnumber the living in 5 years.
We can do better than 50 years. (Score:2)
There are very simple methods by which we could achieve this milestone by the end of the decade. We can make this happen if we all work together! Well, actually, not all of us will be needed, I guess.
It's already dead (Score:1)
Is this a Game of Thrones episode? (Score:2)