A point will come within the next five decades where the number of memorial accounts on Facebook will outnumber those belonging to living individuals. That’s the finding of the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, which studied the demographics of current (living) Facebook users, while projecting future growth of the site to calculate this inflection point.
OII believes that some 1.4 billion users will die before 2100. Using this estimate as a guide, accounts belonging to dead users (well, to their estates) will outnumber living ones by around 2070 or so. But using Facebook’s current expansion rate, the number of memorial accounts would actually approach 5 billion by the end of the century.
The numbers are staggering, and they offer a glimpse into the potential uses of Facebook far into the future — if the company is able to last until then, or someone can preserve all its data. Perhaps a late 21st-century human might use Facebook more to learn about their ancestors and their likes and dislikes than for sharing silly memes and arguing about politics.
Of course all of this could have huge ramifications for our future, the researchers said. “The management of our digital remains will eventually affect everyone who uses social media, since all of us will one day pass away and leave our data behind,” lead author Carl Ohman says. “But the totality of the deceased user profiles also amounts to something larger than the sum of its parts. It is, or will at least become, part of our global digital heritage.”
One point that should be made here: the 2070 date assumes that no further internet users join the social network. That seems a bit unrealistic, so the researchers also estimated potential future growth using current numbers. That’s where the 5 billion number comes from.
Facebook first turned on its memorial profiles a few years back, and the social media giant made changes to memorial pages (Facebook Tributes) earlier this month to make them easier to manage, while restricting administration to just family members and close friends. Facebook says more than 30 million users visit a memorial page each month.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.
Nearly a month after announcing the GPT-6.1 Sol model, OpenAI unveiled GPT-6.1 Terra today. The latest addition to the family focuses on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and professional work, while costing 50% less through the API than GPT-5.6 Terra.
OpenAI says Terra can handle everything from filling out browser forms and working inside spreadsheets to interpreting technical drawings and editing videos. The company says it can also complete computer-based tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.