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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."
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.
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*
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.
Actually I didn't click on it, Facebook conveniently placed a simulation of the year in review for me to see on my feed.
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.
You should have been using MyCleanPC.
APK's host files as interpreted by Bennett Haselton would have been a better bet.
If your life is so fragile that it could be ruined by facebook you didn't have much of a life.
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?
The mass protests are about people being killed and are happening because authorities aren't listening.
No, actually the mass protests are happening because various rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton
colluded with irresponsible media outlets to manipulate people into feeling outrage despite the
harsh truth that the facts relevant to the events in which the people were killed clearly indicate
that those who were killed acted in a manner which brought them serious trouble. Attack a cop
and you can and SHOULD expect a counter attack.
This is not rocket science and I am god damned tired of fuckwits like you parroting bullshit
which make people who asked for trouble appear to be innocent victims.
What you need to do us shut the fuck up and educate yourself on the events as they
really happened and quit spewing childish fantasy bullshit. However I have to point
out that your user ID is spot on.
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.
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.
You do realize that until the point where his daughter died, he very much wanted to see the photos and share them, right? You're essentially asking for a grieving father to go through his entire photo collection and mark his daughter's photos as "don't show this". That's in no way a solution.
I lost my three year old daughter early this year, and I certainly understand how this person feels. I've been avoiding looking at my Facebook photo albums as well. I think it's a kind gesture from Facebook to acknowledge that their user base contains people in every situation imaginable, and for many, a photo retrospective is inappropriate. The only person who should be curating personal photos in Facebook is the profile owner.
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.
Let's see, we have Mike Brown, who MIGHT have "attacked," though the witnesses are starting to be questionable..
You conveniently choose to leave out the reality of the closed circuit video of Brown physically attacking the convenience store owner. That was the reason the cop was called to the scene. Brown then attacked the cop ( Brown had powder burns on his own hands, which indicates Brown's hands were within inches of the gun when it was fired ). Brown attacked the cop and the cop did what was necessary to neutralize the threat.
The guy selling cigarettes illegally was engaged in criminal activity. If he had not rested arrest he would still be alive. When you resist arrest the police ARE entitled under the law to use force if necessary to arrest you. That's how the REAL WORLD works. I've been arrested, and I did NOT resist because I knew that if I did resist I'd get my ass beat down by the cops. If you are being arrested the smart move is to cooperate and act in a respectful manner. It will work in your favor during the arrest and in court as well.
By the way, genius, you guessed wrong about my ethnicity. I am African-American. I have a law degree and I worked my ass off to get where I am in life. And I know that the system we live in is imperfect but it is better than any reasonably available alternative. I know that fucking with a cop who
is trying to do his job is a losing game and I advise all my clients to cooperate fully if they are stopped by the police. If Brown and the cigarette seller
had cooperated with the cops they would both still be alive. There is a lesson here, whether you are too damned stupid in your third-person righteous
indignation to grasp the lesson or not.
That is terrible. You have the sympathies of a least one Anonymous Coward.
I can't imagine what you are going through.
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.
That you keep arguing the facts of specific cases seems to indicate that you are missing the point. People aren't in the streets protesting - let alone rioting - because one, or even 5, guys were killed by the police. There is a long, long history of police not being terribly respectful of the community that they "serve". These recent cases are the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. The cases are not perfect - there is no Rosa Parks - but you can't necessarily plan exactly when the powder keg will explode. While your advice to cooperate with the police is sound, it is a bit terrifying. Local cops are supposed to be serving the community, not doing a bunch of crap that the community doesn't want. Why is a beat cop enforcing a state cigarette tax? Is that really what the local community is clamoring for?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Facebook Sucks
No, actually the mass protests are happening because various rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton colluded with irresponsible media outlets to manipulate people into feeling outrage despite the harsh truth that the facts relevant to the events in which the people were killed clearly indicate that those who were killed acted in a manner which brought them serious trouble. Attack a cop and you can and SHOULD expect a counter attack.
Yeah, a cop should be able violate his his own department rules and use a choke hold on someone that kills them ignoring pleas from that person that he can't breath and then stand around doing nothing when he stops breating. Note his level of resistence consisted of raising his arms up. There should be no problems with a cop summarily executing a kid running around with a pellet gun without any form of interaction with the kid before killing him even after they were told it was probably a toy gun. Any less than outright execution might have put an officer at risk. And there should be absolutely no issues with a cop shooting someone walking up stairway with his girlfriend and then taking no action to render aid to the person he just shot but rather call his union representive so they can start the spin machine going. There shoud be no problem with a mob of cops shooting hundreds of rounds at 2 unarmed people in a car including one cop jumping on the hood of the car and putting several rounds into them through the windsheild. There shouls be no issues with cops making no knock raids on wrong houses that results in innocent people being killed. Not cop people. If you shoot at the unknown black masked thugs invading your house you'd go to jail. Mind you I can go on all night listing crap police have done and gotten away with that would have resulted in serious incarceration for anyone not a cop.
And lets talk about the one your defending. At the grand jury hearing to decide if charges were justified apperently the prime witness supporting the cops account of what happened that the DA brought in to testify was outright lying and couldn't have possibly been near where the shooting happened. And no one should have an issue that the DA admitted he knew that she was lying before he brought her to testify at the hearing. The DA did everything he could to make certain no charges were brought. To paraphrase one expert normally a DA can get charges brought on a sandwich. Whatever the truth was there was more than enough question that there should have been a trial.
This is not rocket science and I am god damned tired of fuckwits like you parroting bullshit which make people who asked for trouble appear to be innocent victims.
And I'm tired of dipshits who too stupid to realize that there are serious systematic issues with the policing in this country. I was in the Infantry stationed in Germany at the peak of the cold war. Our sector was dead center in the Fulda Gap which was the prime Soviet invasion route into central Germany. Those cops on the streets in Ferguson were better equiped then we were. And they weren't at all hesitant to point their assault rifles at anyone and everone violating the first rule of gun safety. You have to be turnip level of stupid not to see any of this as being an issue.
What you need to do us shut the fuck up and educate yourself on the events as they really happened and quit spewing childish fantasy bullshit. However I have to point out that your user ID is spot on.
What you need to do us shut the fuck up and educate yourself on the events as they are really happening and quit spewing childish fantasy bullshit. However I have to point out that your user ID is spot on.
Who is John Galt?
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.
How is suffocating in a chokehold "resisting arrest"? He was not actually being arrested, by the way. But this kind of "if police kills you, you probably deserved it" logic really needs to go. This sort of uniform-bearer worship leads to Grand Juries not even handing out an indictment. That makes it impossible to actually do a proper trial in order to figure out truth and justice, and that in turn exacerbates the police stance that they are attack dogs, trained to attack and kill on a whim, with any resulting casualties being the victim's problem.
The idea of police is to make it less not more dangerous to go out on the street. Killing people selling unregistered cigarettes is not exactly improving the statistics.
...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.
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.