The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? | Hacker News Reader

The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook?

1000memories.com

83 pointsjonathanbgood33 comments

The guys at www.entrustet.com have been talking about this for the last 6 months. Some of 1000 memories points are straight up lifted. Have some integrity guys. The interwebs know when you copy.

Stats are free, but you should at least credit them for inspiration.

Isn't the moral of Hacker News that the ideas don't matter that much, only the execution?

Taking someones idea for a business and plagiarism are very different things

Reminded me of this XKCD http://xkcd.com/686/ Which just made me sad.

The alt-text lightens the mood a bit though.

It reminded me of this Dinosaur Comic http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1490 Which cheered me up. Perhaps you're not really gone if you find a way to convince people that you are still alive?

A friend of mine died (young -- early 30s) this year. For a while, until his computers were taken care of, he was still "online" through various IM services, which was creepy.

A certain IRC network has also, apparently, made an exception to its policy on expiring registered nicks -- nine months later, his is still registered and protected. Which is a nice gesture.

It would be fascinating to calculate when the dead on Facebook will outnumber the living. Anyone able to interpolate based on the data provided + Facebook's growth rate?

sounds like a movie.. i like how you think.

If the number active (alive) Facebook users grows at a sufficient exponential rate, e.g. each new generation has at least 2× the users of the last generation, then the answer would be “never”

Edit: Um, humans do grow in population in an exponential pattern… how long do you think the population has been at 6.8 billion?

Last I checked humans are limited in supply. AI users though...

Currently there are many zero AIs, as far as we know.

Well, populations are typically modeled as a sigmoid function, they only appear to be growing exponentially. I think it's fair to assume total population will stabilise whilst we are still resource limited to Earth.

It seems that we are at the inflection point of the sigmoid:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/World-Pop...

Reassuring to see that the UN doesn't predict any large discontinuities in that graph

The last estimate I seem to find on the subject said that the population should level off at 10 billion in 2200. Granted, this is from 1999: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/six...

Humans do not necessarily reproduce exponentially. Hans Rosling's TED talks feature, as a central theme, that the population can stabilize at 9 billion with the right initiatives and social changes. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...

My post starts with "If". (I imagine the possibility of a singularity and the consequent interstellar expansions and/or virtual entities.)

According to world population on wikipedia it seems like more people live now than have died since year 1.

I read that this is an urban myth and actually only a few percent of the people who have ever lived are alive today.

Ever lived != lived since year 1. That said I just looked at the table on wikipedia and did some simple calculations. In any case even if more people died since year 1 than are alive today, not many more died.

If you take ALL deaths, that does greatly outnumber the people alive today.

I recently came across some YT channels of high-altitude climbers who'd deceased in their endeavors, with their last videos remaining.

http://www.youtube.com/user/karlunterkircher http://www.youtube.com/user/FredrikEricsson http://vimeo.com/joepuryear/videos

Creepy. There'd be an opportunity for digital wills, so a next of kin can claim passwords for ghosted accounts. Maybe some type of program that various sites can adopt, and users just register their account names with the program's hub site.

check out some friends of mine at www.entrustet.com

They are doing exactly what you describe

Had never heard of 1000memories. Interesting idea, but how can they really promise to be around "forever?" Does anyone know how they plan to make money on their "free" service?

This seems like a (morbid) opportunity. An AI to keep these people posting on each other walls.

I'm reminded of a short story by Larry Niven... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defenseless_Dead

The Facebook wall for one of my passed away friends is regularly populated with notes and shared memories by those who knew him.

Same here. I got two FB firsts this year: first death of a friend I learned of via FB (I've had another since), and first "update" from a dead friend who's mother now controls his account.

I have a friend who passed away earlier this year. I found out on Facebook, as there was a sudden influx of people commenting on his wall about his passing.

8 months later, the account is still active. Facebook will occasionally tell me that I should reconnect with him, which frankly is a bit creepy.

The worst part, however, is that his mom still posts messages on his wall as if he can read them. I find this equal parts creepy and sad.

Or, what would be sort of interesting is a feature to allow you to post one or more status updates after death. "If you're reading this now, the mission was unsuccessful..."

I know of at least one, and it's annoying when Facebook does that 'hey, you haven't talked to this person in a while, write them a message' thing. There needs to be a way for the deceased to have accounts either deactivated or taken out of regular circulation.

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=deceased

Do they really have to be called 'ghosts'?

Yes, sorry.

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