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1.4bn of Facebook’s 2.27bn members could be dead in 50 years- Oxford Institute

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The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) in its new analysis from academics has revealed that the number of dead Facebook users could outnumber the living by 2070.

Based on statistics gathered by the institute, the global social media site has around 2.27 billion members, but 1.4 billion will die before 2100, according to the new calculations.

Lead author and doctoral candidate of the research, Carl Ohman, revealed:

“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.

“The management of our digital remains will eventually affect everyone who uses social media, since all of us will pass away and leave our data behind.

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“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.”

Facebook, which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is the world’s largest social networking platform.

The social network has a system in place for when a user dies, which allows a legacy contact to take over their account and turn it into a memorial space rather than an active profile.

Co-author David Watson, who is also a DPhil student at the OII, said that Facebook is only an example of what awaits any platform with similar connectivity and global reach.

He called on these sites to invite historians, archaeologists and ethicists to participate in the process of curating the vast volume of accumulated data that we leave behind as we pass away.

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