For the next 50 years, Facebook could look like a graveyard. That's because, according to academics at the University of Oxford, in 2069, the dead could exceed the number of live profiles on the social network. The study, published by Big Data & Society, discovered what is expected to happen to the social network in the next 50 years.
Virtual cemetery? Facebook will have more dead than living accounts in 50 years
The number of dead Facebook users is growing every day. By 2012, eight years after the platform's launch, 30 million users had died.
Today, it has over two billion users, and an estimated 8000 users die daily. Based on Facebook user statistics in 2018, researchers predicted that the number of dead users could reach at least 1,4 billion, and potentially as many as 4,9 billion by the end of the century.
In recent years, the growth of the social network has slowed dramatically. In the most extreme scenario, where the platform doesn't gain new users, Facebook will become a virtual graveyard by the end of the century, and that only includes profiles turned into "In Memory" accounts - digital tombstones that friends and family can visit in memory. of the deceased.
The tech giant recognized the implications of online death and launched a series of features to avoid users' discomfort - before that, users could invite their dead friends to parties and events, or wish them a happy birthday. New "In Memory" tools allow people to respect the dead with an AI system, to prevent deceased profiles from coming up "in painful ways".
Having the Facebook takeover might not be the worst thing to happen, as most of us live deliberately ignoring the inevitability of death. The platform will keep you alive in digital form once you die, preserving your thoughts, memories, and online relationships. Our never-ending online presence is changing the way we die, and for those left behind, it is changing the way we experience and deal with death.
Fonte: KBC Channel
