Dead Facebook account holders ‘could outnumber living in fifty years’

&Tab;&Tab;<div class&equals;"wpcnt">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div class&equals;"wpa">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<span class&equals;"wpa-about">Advertisements<&sol;span>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div class&equals;"u top&lowbar;amp">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<amp-ad width&equals;"300" height&equals;"265"&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab; type&equals;"pubmine"&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab; data-siteid&equals;"111265417"&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab; data-section&equals;"2">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;amp-ad>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;div>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;div>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;div><p>The number of dead Facebook account holders could outnumber the living within fifty years&comma; new research has claimed&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Academics from the Oxford Internet Institute &lpar;OII&rpar;&comma; part of the University of Oxford&comma; found that based on 2018 user figures&comma; at least 1&period;4 billion of the site’s around 2&period;3 billion users will die before 2100&comma; with the number of dead overtaking the living by 2070&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>However&comma; the researchers said that if the platform was to continue growing at its current rate of about 13&percnt; each year&comma; the number of dead users on the site could reach as high as 4&period;9 billion by the end of the century&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><&excl;--Ads3--><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Facebook&comma; which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram&comma; is the world’s largest social networking platform&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<blockquote><p>These statistics give rise to new and difficult questions around who has the right to all this data&comma; 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<&sol;p><&sol;blockquote>&NewLine;<p>Lead author of the research&comma; Carl Ohman&comma; a doctoral candidate at the OII said&colon; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;These statistics give rise to new and difficult questions around who has the right to all this data&comma; 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&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;On a societal level&comma; we have just begun asking these questions and we have a long way to go&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;The management of our digital remains will eventually affect everyone who uses social media&comma; since all of us will one day pass away and leave our data behind&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;But the totality of the deceased user profiles also amounts to something larger than the sum of its parts&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;It is&comma; or will at least become&comma; part of our global digital heritage&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Facebook does have a system in place for when users die&comma; which allows them to set a legacy contact to control their profile once they die&comma; with the page becoming a memorial space rather than an active profile&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The social media site said recently that more than 30 million people view memorialised profiles on the platform every month&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><&excl;--Ads4--><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Co-author David Watson argued that Facebook should allow historians and others to access data in years to come as a way of understanding history&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Never before in history has such a vast archive of human behaviour and culture been assembled in one place&period;<br &sol;>&NewLine;&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Controlling this archive will&comma; in a sense&comma; be to control our history&comma;” he said&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;It is therefore important that we ensure that access to these historical data is not limited to a single for-profit firm&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;It is also important to make sure that future generations can use our digital heritage to understand their history&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Facebook should invite historians&comma; archivists&comma; archaeologists and ethicists to participate in the process of curating the vast volume of accumulated data that we leave behind as we pass away&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;This is not just about finding solutions that will be sustainable for the next couple of years&comma; but possibly for many decades ahead&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div style&equals;"padding-bottom&colon;15px&semi;" class&equals;"wordads-tag" data-slot-type&equals;"belowpost">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div id&equals;"atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68ed7551d1079">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<script type&equals;"text&sol;javascript">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;window&period;getAdSnippetCallback &equals; 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