Facebook: From here 2070, there would be more dead than alive users | Chronic

The dead can survive longer than the actual users on Facebook in half a century, which could have serious consequences on how the digital heritage will be treated in the future. This is apparent from a study conducted by Carl Öhman and David Watson, Oxford Internet Institute, in a book published in the newspaper "Big Data and Society".

The researchers indicate that, according to the levels of users in 2018, at least 1,400 million members of the social network will die before 2100.

In this scenario, the deaths could exceed the living in 2070. However, while it continues to increase at the current rate (13%), the number of deceased users could reach 4.9 billion by the end of the century . In both cases, most profiles belong to non-Western users.

"These statistics raise new and difficult questions about the rights of all these data, how to manage them in the best interest of the family and friends of the deceased, and their use by future historians to understand the past.", says Öhman, lead author of the study and PhD student at the Oxford Internet Institute.

"At the social level, we are just starting to ask these questions and we still have a long way to go." The management of our digital remains will eventually affect all those who use social networks, because we will all die one day and leave our data "adds Öhman, who points out: "At least it will be part of our global digital heritage".

David Watson, co-author of the survey, points out that "Never before in the history of such vast archives of behavior and human culture had been collected in one place".

"The control of this file will be in a way control of our history so it is important that we ensure that access to this historical data is not limited to a single for-profit business." future generations can use our digital heritage to understand its history "he adds.

The badysis establishes two potential extreme scenarios taking into account that the future trend of their use will fall somewhere in-between.

The first scenario badumes that there will be no new users after 2018. Under these conditions, the proportion of users killed in Asia is rising rapidly and represents almost 44% of the total at the end of the century. .

Nearly half of these profiles come from India and Indonesia, representing nearly 279 million deceased members by 2100.

The second scenario badumes that it will continue to grow at its current annual rate of 13% worldwide until saturation of each market. Under these conditions, Africa will constitute a growing proportion of dead users, particularly Nigeria, since it represents more than 6% of the total.

On the contrary, Western users would mean only a minority of users, and only the United States would be among the top 10 countries.

"The results should not be interpreted as a prediction of the future, but as a commentary on current developments and an opportunity to shape the future we are heading for"says Öhman, who says:

"This has nothing to do with our more general argument that critical discussion about online death and its macroscopic implications is urgently needed." Facebook is simply an example of what awaits any platform offering connectivity and a similar global reach. " added.

The study's forecasts are based on United Nations data, which provide the number of expected deaths and the total population for each country of the world, broken down by age, and on company data from Mark Zuckerberg extracted from the function. Audience Insights of the company.