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."

Comments

awkward 'year in review'

[james_shoemaker]

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.

Re:Millions used this... one complained.

[McGruber]

"When parents die they're buried in the ground, but when a child dies you bury the child in your heart" - korean proverb

Re:People Are Such Babies

[Alan Shutko]

This is how adults resolve things. There were no lawsuits. There were no mass protests. There was a guy who said "Yeah, that picture the algorithm picked? It hurt." And Facebook said "Wow, we can see that would hurt, and we're sorry it did. We will try to do better."

WTF is wrong with this exchange?