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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."
Or do we want Facebook even deeper into our personal tish so their algorithm can "get it right" next time?
If for you, the answer is "no", than don't use Facebook.
Problem solved.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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.
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.
"When parents die they're buried in the ground, but when a child dies you bury the child in your heart" - korean proverb
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?
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.
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?
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.