Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Apologizes For 'Year In Review' Photos
Facebook this year showed users a compilation of photos drawn from their own gallery of uploaded images, but the automatic nature of the collation and display of those photos inspired the need for an apology on Facebook's part to at least one reader who was upset by the compiled pictures. That may sound silly, but even innocent data-mashing can touch real nerves.
"Eric Meyer, a web design consultant and writer, is one of those people. Earlier this year, he lost his daughter to brain cancer on her sixth birthday. For that reason, Meyer wrote in a blog post, he had actively avoided looking at previews of his own automatically generated summary post.
But Facebook put a personalized prompt advertising the feature in his newsfeed, he wrote, prominently featuring the face of his dead daughter -- surrounded by what appears to be clip art figures having a party."
Seriously
Is this seriously how we want our lives run?
Or do we want Facebook even deeper into our personal tish so their algorithm can "get it right" next time?
Terrible that these things happen...
Yet another example that living in online world, you must be ready to always face what you leave behind.
My hopes are that ppl really understood this really simple thing.
It may not make a difference now what you post or do, yet in 5-10-20 years, it might be a huge thing in individuals life.
will they make money from it?
notext
Streisand Effect. I am looking at pictures of dead babies now. Also this dude is now getting hits on his blog which is probably what he wanted all along.
You voluntarily hand over your privacy to a group with a long history of treating your life as their product. And then you act shocked when they take liberties with what they feel is theirs....
I find it hard to feel sorry for people who complain. Welcome to the flipside of being able to tell people that you passed gas while lunching at Starbucks with the press of a button. *yawn*
Goddamm racists and homophobes all of them!!!
We should hold a breastfeeding protest in FB's parking now!!
Mine showed a photo that someone (or maybe even Facebook's automatic tagging thingie) had tagged me in, even though I was not in it. I'd just posted the thing without previewing it because I figured what the hell.
Anyway, that photo was one that some girl had taken at a party I was not even at, where she was dressed pretty provocatively and making a lustful gesture. I don't even remember having seen the notification that I was tagged. In any case, my wife saw this and went into orbit, thinking I had been cheating on her and was boasting about it on facebook. Now I've been sued for divorce and have lawyers demanding I turn over my hard drives. Add to that, all of my Facebook friends saw it and were like "what the hell?" It has been a total embarrassment and has basically ruined my life.
Thanks a lot, Mr. Fuckerberg.
is the Best Indignation.
Facebook keeps showing me one of those also, for mine they picked a photo I took of a flood at our lake home. Images of our docks under water, tree limbs floating by, with a happy party border. I laugh each time I see it, but I can see not wanting some photos being revived onto my feed.
Elected not to participate?
I purposely haven't touched my year in review thing, but it's constantly up the top of my facebook news feed - with a recent picture I took on a trip.
I dare say the same thing has happened to him, except with a picture of his dead daughter.
I can't hide it ("I don't want to see this" hides it until the page refreshes), I didn't ask for it, but personally I don't care.
The difference is, he's being taunted by facebook with his dead daughter against his will.
My "year in review" prominently displayed a picture of the back of my car having been crushed in when I got rear ended by a giant truck. My obvious response was "gee, thanks Facebook." Obviously that doesn't have anything on a picture of someone's deceased daughter, but it shows how poorly conceived the feature is.
"most-liked photos didn’t allow users to choose which photos they want to highlight" Well yes you could change the photos. And they were never shared publicly unless you wanted to share them. Finally you never had to see them at all, by not clicking the year in review link facebook had generated for you...
This should not have been 'automatic'. I was greeted by an image of a pet i lost.
Just the thought that there might be people data mining all these pictures from unsuspecting users's accounts while jerking off behind their desks on company time should make the entire world throw up simultaneously.
But but but... What if my kid sees a titty? I mean, sure he sucked on one when he was little, but he doesn't remember that. And sure he plays violent video games and watches violent movies, but that's just normal behavior. If he sees a titty though... Ahhh, I can't imagine how mortified he will be and how much his development will be damaged. Would someone please think of the children?
Known Fact...
Seeing girls with their tits hanging out on Facebook is the gateway to the path of becoming a total anti-Jesus terrorists that eats babies.
It's true. That's what Bill O'Reilly said. He's ALWAYS right!
With Facebook being all about making sense of data for advertising purpose you would expect they would come up with some smart algorithm that would figure out the actual context behind posts. I'd expect Facebook to know when people are happy, sad, angry, drunk, silly etc. when they post and use that information not only for targeted advertising but for the benefit of their users.
The year in review is just a summary of what you yourself have posted. "Don't show me my own photos" seems like an unrealistic request for a mainstream service. I think the most that can be done is have a preference that people can check if they don't want their year in review. Facebook has plenty of ethical flaws, but this is not one of them.
can someone explain to me why it's so important to have a Facebook account?
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
I quite liked my year in review. The pictures were from some of my favorite events of the year. Whatever algorithm they used came up with a very nice collection of pictures.
Astounding that the parent is modded "troll". Astounding.
HAHAHA
Some commenters are ridiculing how people were 'outraged' from the year in review. But if you look at the actual article by Eric (http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2014/12/24/inadvertent-algorithmic-cruelty/) - and note the title -'inadvertent algorithmic cruelty' it is much more an analysis of the design of the feature and applying human sensitivity to software design. His closing statement is 'If I could fix one thing about our industry, just one thing, it would be that: to increase awareness of and consideration for the failure modes, the edge cases, the worst-case scenarios.'
It wasn't a rant against Facebook. It wasn't a 'woe is me, Facebook ruined my life'. It was a post about how Facebook's design has an affect on him that they probably weren't going for.
Had it not been Eric Meyer, I would imagine there would have been no public apology, though perhaps just a rethink of the design.
There wasn't really even a demand that Facebook change anything. But if you're Facebook, you might consider how many others are in a similar situation that Eric is in and are confronted by uncomfortable images. It isn't good business to have people made uncomfortable, unhappy or pained by your product.
Similar to if they had accidentally had Goatse show up in everybody's feed. Even if nobody complained, you are still going to lose at least some customers because it makes the experience unpleasant.
yeah almost like a REAL friend FACEBOOK! I was shocked to see my beets and greens I ate last spring! Kind of a weird idea 'injecting' what you supposedly want to see. remember; All 'your pictures' are 'our pictures' in Soviet Facebook.
The dimwits at fb came up with yet another "Great Idea", did a half-assed implementation without thinking it through, and wound up hurting and pissing off people.
No one, and I mean literally not one single person old enough to know anything about computers and social media should be surprised by this latest screw up.
I don't expect companies or individuals to be perfect. But I do expect them to learn from their mistakes; when they shoot themselves in the foot and then reload and keep pulling the trigger, I have no sympathy for them.
I don't use Facebook much, saw other year in reviews, saw mine, kept seeing mine, it kept saying it's not public, so why do I keep seeing mine? Why would I want to see my "year in review"? This only works for people who had *A GOOD YEAR*. And it took some guy who lost his daughter writing a blog post for Facebook to clue into this fact. So how many people were pissed off by this? How large of a portion of facebook users cried because of this? This is why I say, "Fuck Facebook." They think algorithms are the key to human relationships, and it's a shitty, well, whatever it is--website, service, social network, vanity-machine, ego-creator.
They need to cut that shit out. When I want to start delving into my past, I'll get a beer, and I'll hit the search button. Otherwise, leave it the fuck alone.
When you invite Mr Corporate into your life, it is much the same as inviting a vampire into your home, they never leave and do what they will. Mr Corporate has a tendency to be overly politically correct in pursuit of his profits and because of that correctness lamerfies everything he touches. Now Mr Corporate is not a bad guy and he'll do something nice if he thinks it will make him some money, but usually, he ends up having to apologize for it because when he does things like that they always lack sincerity.
It's like apologizing after facefucking someone, you still did it and the act of apologizing doesn't make the errant facefuck any more sincere so you will continue to enjoy facefucking others.
The thing is, if you don't like being facefucked, you shouldn't agree to the terms of a facefucking service and be surprised when you get a sincere facefuck.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And the public tantrums with my friends lasted until I got one. Can I delete it now? I hate the damned thing.
In any case, theft of a few dollars worth of tobacco products doesn't constitute a crime that warrants execution in any state.
But maybe it should? Where does it stop? Civilized life can be fragile, and there are too damn many people. Everyone should be free to do what they want, but as soon as they start stealing or destroying another's property society has no use for them.
Looters? shoot on sight.
Destroying / Defacing public infrastructure? shoot on sight.
Things would be a lot nicer real quick.
BTW - while I may seem harsh, I also think there are many "crimes" that should not be... most drug crimes, and almost anything where another person is not hurt, physically or financially.
When you see a "year in review" special on TV news (well, for those few who still watch TV news) they don't just pick and choose ONLY the happy happy joy joy events from the year.
All the stuff that actually happened has a place in a thorough review of your year. Even the not so good times. Actually I'd argue that there's more value in the not so good times as it gives you the perspective to see how far you've come, or conversely, how far you've fallen, and keep things in perspective or possibly even motivate you. Now the border choices, that's rather lame and their algorithms clearly aren't smart enough to pick appropriately so they should really stick to something fairly generic most of the time.
As for TFA. The loss of a loved one is tragic, but not being able to look at their photo is probably a sign that you still need help dealing with it. It's still an event that really happened and just suppressing it doesn't make it go away or make things any easier in the long run (at least not for most people). The people I've lost I WANT to remember, and sometimes fear forgetting too much as memories fade over time. Anyway, the feature is also obviously not malicious and many (likely the majority) of users like it, so I don't see anything wrong with it. The only real improvement, aside from the aforementioned border selection issue, should be making it either A. Voluntary opt-in only (it gives you a text-only link to click to generate it) or B. At least make "I don't want to see this" permanent, and or let the [x] permanently delete from news feed. I don't see how anyone could reasonably complain about option A, and even option B seems polite enough for a site that you've already provided with all those photos and on which you or anyone else who you've allowed could view any and all of them at any time regardless.
As good as algorithms get, they still can't detect sarcasm or irony (including trolling). There's enough of that happening on the melodramatic Facebook feeds that it's probably wise not to attempt to auto-detect emotions too much.
Ever consider the case that he probably posted the photo of his daughter while she was still alive? And that he either forgot about it or couldn't bring himself to retroactively delete it?
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I've always disagreed with most of the premises behind facebook.
I would use a service that:
1. Didn't share any of my data with anyone
2. Didn't try to make my comments on other sites visible
3. Didn't try to mix my family with my friends or my work or assume that I have only one set of friends.
4. Didn't make me read every inane utterance of everyone I've ever come in contact with
5. Didn't try to sell me anything
6. Didn't try to sell me social games, I need social games like I need a long term illness
Also I'd be willing to pay for a service if that meant no f'n adds.
I have lots of (real life) family members and friends that I like to hear about but I don't have time to individually call or email each of them every week. Knowing what's going on with them and their families is extremely helpful to me. I also share with them a few tidbits of what's going on with us. The only reason this works is because "everyone" has a Facebook account. I don't play the stupid games, I block and/or don't click on the dumb ads, and I make sure every post is set to "friends only." I also don't post anything that I would be really embarrassed if the world knew, and I have set it to require my approval when anyone tags me or tries to post to my wall. I pay for the service by letting it spam me to the degree it does, and allowing it access to the content I post. If there were a paid service that met the same needs without so much marketing and data mining, I'd consider it as a good alternative. MyFamily used to do that reasonably well, but they shut down, so Facebook it is. As long as you understand what you're giving up and what you're getting, it can make perfect sense to join and you don't need to be an "idiot" at all. That's not to say there are no idiots on Facebook; it's loaded with them, but that doesn't mean that having an account there makes you one.
In the case of Slashdot, I don't have an account because I don't feel it would be sufficiently beneficial to me... so which one of us is the "idiot," The_Rook, or me? I'd argue neither of use needs to be.
It displays at the top of your news feed regardless of whether or bit you post it.
Everyone you know also has to stop using it or at least stop uploading pictures of you to it, mentioning you by name on it, using Facebook email to communicate with you, etc.
HAHHAAH eat it dumbass turdbook users. Keep being their commercial bitch!
This will only inspire the data snoopers to try understand data more, and figure out who is dead in photos etc. so as to not cause this again, rather than just realise it's fucking creepy. Too many creepy nerds sniffing through data like it's women's knickers, you hear me slashdot?
Facebook Sucks
hi friends
I saw some titties and I turned out okay. *shrugs*
No, he uploaded the photos and he's the one that keeps going back to Facebook to see them on display.
I think it's great that Facebook is altering the behaviour of their system to avoid problems like this, but lets not pretend that they're purposely causing their users harm. This is the kind of shit that can and does happen when you broadcast your personal life to the entire world. If you don't want things like this to happen to you don't use these kinds of services.
Let's see.
User's daughter is alive. He takes pictures of her and posts them on facebook like a proud parent.
User's daughter dies. User grieves.
User starts to get over his grief. Facebook tosses the images right in his face.
Reaction of a third party: "well you shouldn't have posted them in the first place!"
Tell me AC. Are you this sociopathic in life outside slashdot too? Because if you are, you should seek psychiatric help.
I've clicked "I don't want to see this" several dozen times and these annoyances still keep appearing.....
User's daughter is alive. He takes pictures of her and posts them on facebook like a proud parent.
He sells personal data of his child to an advertising company, maybe this is being a proud parent, it doesn't make it less irrational. She'd have loved being manipulated years down the line by product placement that knew she preferred chocolate ice cream in some jolly park when she was 4.
Well, you just jumped from sociopath to straight up psychopath. Not only do you feel no compassion, you're actively enjoying turning the situation against the user just to get off on it.
Congratulations.
If you had something hurtful happen this year then don't click on a big photo thing that says "year in review"?!
I haven't clicked on mine because I usually hate that crap from Facebook so I just ignore it... I wouldn't know if there was something hurtful in it or not....
...hooked up to an EEG machine.
The backstory is that I had gone to roust him out of bed because he's chronically late but found him in the bathroom, unconscious and not breathing. Somehow he had passed out, fell, and landed on a trash bin and the bin liner had blocked his airway.
He spent four days in the ICU, the first day in a propofol-induced coma with an EEG connected. It was a horrifying experience and my wife posted the image two days later basically as a way of letting people know what had happened and why we had gone silent to everyone for a few days.
She was annoyed by the image of him presented as "what a great year" but I don't think much more than annoyed.
I think the entire feature is lame and I've marked all of them (my own suggested one and every other I've been presented) as "I don't want to see this". Trying to block my own suggested one in the Facebook IOS app consistently crashed the app.
My takeaway on this is that Facebook's image analytics suck. As good as they seem to be at identifying faces for tagging you might think they would be able to train their system to identify smiling faces so that when they suggested images they would tend to show ones more likely to be positive and reject others.
because it had the highest engagement of any pictures you posted (the most comments, and the most views).
How else is it going to figure out the most important photo from the last year?
Stop using Facebook.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I see titties nearly every night and morning. If that's warping me in some horrid fashion, I say "Bring it on".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If someone "likes" or "comments" on the photo it shows up back up in the top your news feed. My wife's mom died this year and her starting picture was one of her and her mom. She had a good cry but moved on. People need to stop looking for anything to bitch at.
See what I did. Bitched at someone who was bitching.
The guy is just stirring up drama, which may be part of the grieving process. He just posted a video of his daughter on his own blog.
He's got a point, though. Facebook is the creepy guy in the van trading pictures of your kids for candy. They're not exactly shy about sharing the fact that they want to monetize every bit of information you give them.
You're just playing the "Don't blame the victim!" card... I can feel sorry for the guy while still hoping that he (and others) learns from this incident.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
This function had a 'don't want to see' button/option/dropdown menu, a little triangle on the righ side you could choose not to see it, like most ads. You could get rid of it pretty easily.
If you post it, you lost it, people seem to be unable to understand what facebook really is, and when they do, they act surprised, Are you stupid or something?
By participating in FB you erode everyone's privacy.
I am sorry it took a painful incident to raise your awareness (that has happened to me in different circumstances so I empathize, but it is still important to speak the truth, especially when there is pain and difficulty because that is when people pay attention), but the bottom line is that those of us smart and careful enough to avoid (to the extent possible) participating in predatory social media are hurt by all of you who do.
Because you erode the utility and use of the previously existing social components of the web where we have/had more control and privacy, at least in a legal sense. Giving us more ability to fight the social media bastards.
Because you reduce the pressure on companies, governments, and society to create/allow more secure and people-friendly (as opposed to corporate and government friendly) technology.
Because you empower the large corporations and their government lackeys to further erode our privacy and other freedoms.
So there is a limit to the sympathy and empathy. At some point it is necessary to start saying: You all made this bed, if you can't stand the heat, come out and help the few of us on the outside to burn down the kitchen. Or something like that.
You people are just smarter
Comedy equals tragedy plus time.
- GladOS
I didn't see anybody saying that Facebook was out to hurt anybody, just that that's what wound up happening, and that Facebook voluntarily did something about it. That's good.
He didn't go back to Facebook to see the photos, he went back because Facebook is useful in keeping in contact with people. Facebook showed him a picture of his dead child (probably repeatedly) without him doing anything else.
All services come with possible downsides. If you don't want to die in a traffic accident, never drive or cross the street. If you don't want to be shot, don't go to a movie theater. I eat food, despite the danger of fatal food poisoning. I'd rather do something with a risk than nothing at all.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes