
The Dead May Outnumber the Living on Facebook in 50 Years - never-the-bride
https://hyperallergic.com/497552/the-dead-may-outnumber-the-living-on-facebook-in-50-years/
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lifeisstillgood
This does lead to an interesting idea - that one thing 18th and 19th century
governments did that helped the industrial and financial revolutions was much
better census and records keeping.

Now Facebook has an incentive to catalogue and index, well, _everyone_ even in
countries where the government ability to do so is lacking.

The Peruvian economist who tried to show that finance was denied to people who
lived on land unofficially for generations but as they officially did not live
there had no access to capital might find that an interesting approach - at
some point digitisation of global records is going to have to happen - what if
the laggards are replaced by Facebook? What if most people in the globe just
keep their Facebook status up to date in lieu of Government record keeping.

If we for example posit everyone has a FIDO HSM, and that facebook has special
records that are signable. Eventually you have a network of unofficial records
that have an invioable web of trust. I live at this location. My friends
Dadlikes/signs that post, and my friends Dad works at the post office and then
the tax office can find out where to send me letters.

This is the basic promise of government record digitisation. Its just bottom
up.

Lots of advantages besides the hideously obvious downsides.

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pointillistic
Facebook itself will not wait that long...

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lifeisstillgood
may not _wait_?

They might start killing people now to tip the balance? Sort out privacy
issues once and for all?

That reminds me of The Onion headline "Google to eliminate all data it cannot
index".

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ErotemeObelus
For people taking notes: this would be a great time to start a new social
network. Because nobody wants to join a network that is figuratively a grave
yard. It also is proof that facebook has a finite life expectancy.

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merricksb
Discussion of paper yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19778045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19778045)

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yters
They could pivot and become a way of preserving the past for people interested
in genealogy.

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ekianjo
Facebook won't be there in 50 years, in all likelihood.

