The exact number of Facebook users who have passed away remains unknown. However, it seems logical to assume that if the network continues to grow at its current pace, the number of dead will overpass the number of living users. This would augment its increasing notion as a platform on which to pay tribute to our departed, with user peaks on All Saints' or All Souls' Day – at least in those geographic areas where Western Christianity is predominantly practised. To understand and eventually anticipate these scenarios, the quantitative aspect of 'how many' and 'when' is not irrelevant. Are the dead taking over Facebook?
A homonymous 2019 research article by Carl Öhman and David Watson published in the Big Data & Society (BD&S) scholarly journal suggests that if the network continues to expand at the rate of 13% (as of 2018), a minimum of 4.9 billion users will pass away before 2100. The projection comes to the conclusion that not only that the dead will outnumber the living before the end of the century, but also that their geographical distribution would change and prevalently belong to non-Western users. Nearly 42% of all dead profiles would be located in Asia, followed by Africa with an over 36% share.[1] Öhman and Watson’s article confirms the urgency with which also the academic community starts to address the ethics connected to these vast volumes of data that users leave behind.
Scholars of law and related areas are investigating new dilemmas arising from inheritance of digital estates and issues of posthumous online privacy. Sociologists and anthropologists are increasingly turning their gaze towards the new types of ‘para-social’ relationships, and the ‘continuing bonds’ that we shape with the online dead. And in philosophy, there has been a rising interest for the ontological and ethical status of digital remains. In short, online death has rapidly become a booming and diverse research area.[2]
In light of the above, platforms will also increasingly be confronted with technical and organisational questions concerning the death of their users, such as storage and management, and its connected costs (and benefits). But from this, a question of curation appears – of selecting the 'right' data from far larger sets and guaranteeing its compatibility with ever-evolving storage formats, file extensions, etc. For many people, the virtual realm is not considered 'real', but an abstract and ephemeral domain that can be switched on and off. It’s in fact the opposite. A house of a departed may be inherited or sold, a personal object kept, or disappeared in the transition from one generation to the next; a photo may be hung on a wall, or end up in a drawer. But data will always be data, and outlive us far more than any physical traces we leave behind.
Yet, not everyone has the opportunity to prepare his/her death. Like most Six-Feet-Under-deaths, the latter is often unforeseen. For others, the subject of death is simply too uncomfortable to be addressed. Often only advanced age or the knowledge of a mortal disease leads a person to embrace their departure, and in those cases, priority is still given to what can be physically passed on, and to whom. Yet, the digital heritage we leave behind is far less curated, because in theory, but not in practice, there are infinite possibilities and a sheer, endless availability of storage. There are indeed limitations to the extent to which this content can be visualised and absorbed by users. From today’s perspective, it would be advisable to reduce them to only a few, well-curated, items. A compact Wunderkammer.
Peter Hujar’s melancholic photo of Candy Darling on her Deathbed portrays the transgender actress, aged 29, shortly before she died of lymphoma. She left not only this photo behind, but also a note in which she states that:
Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life… I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. Did you know I couldn’t last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again.

Peter Hujar. Candy Darling on her Deathbed. 1973. 2021 Peter Hujar Archive. Object number: 450.2015
Unarguably, Candy Darling was in charge of her death. She recorded her departure by means of two basic media: a photo and a note. Switching again to the digital world, this would be equivalent to a profile picture and a post. This condensation could be an inspiration for those who would like to prepare their online death while keeping in mind a desire to vaccinate it against the danger of obsoleteness, with which an algorithm may label data sets that are generating costs, but no traffic. It sounds cruel to bring this to a point, yet it states the obvious: our data will outlive us, but only until a platform decides to take us offline.
Will we die two deaths in the future – a real and a virtual one, when our data won't be of use anymore and ultimately offloaded? Will new online funeral rituals appear? Will platforms, such as Facebook, offer subscription plans for which we pay to preserve our data for a determined amount of years? Will we have a choice?
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