Facebook has apologised after its ‘Review of the Year’ feature inadvertently brought up painful memories for some users.
The issues began to surface after Facebook began delivering its auto-generated yearly recap earlier this month to users of the huge social network.
For blogger and author Eric Meyer, whose six-year-old daughter died during the year, it was a shock to see his year in review featured a photo of his late daughter.
“For those of us who lived through the death of loved ones, or spent extended time in the hospital, or were hit by divorce or losing a job or any one of a hundred crises, we might not want another look at this past year,” Meyer wrote on his blog.
“There wasn’t enough thought given to cases like mine… or anyone who had a bad year. The design is for the ideal user, the happy, upbeat, good-life user. It doesn’t take other user cases into account.”
The complaint quickly went viral on Twitter and other social media.
Facebook’s product manager Jonathan Gheller has apologised to Meyer and declared that the “Year in Review” team “can do better” in the future.
While it’s not clear what those changes will involve, The Guardian notes that Facebook has already changed the ending of the slideshow from “it’s been a great year” to “see you next year” to avoid making presumptions.
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