Everyone on the Internet Will Die. We Need a Plan for Their Data

The internet is aging. As soon as the 2060s, there may be more dead than alive users on Facebook. Many of the platforms that are now part of society’s basic infrastructure face a similar prospect. What happens to these platforms—and their users—when they die, will become a critical battleground for the internet’s future, with major implications for global power relations. Yet we have done virtually zero preparation for it.

Back in 1997, when John Perry Barlow published his now legendary...