The Dead May Outnumber the Living on Facebook in 50 Years

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.

Facebook itself will not wait that long...

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.

Discussion of paper yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19778045

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

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