Dead Facebook Users To Outnumber Living

27 April 2019, 06:27

Researchers at Oxford Uni say the number of dead Facebook account holders could outnumber the living within 50 years.

The site has around 2.3 billion users and a study's found at least 1.4 billion of them will die before 2100, leaving their data behind.

Lead author of the research, Carl Ohman, a doctoral candidate at the OII said: "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.

"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."