When algorithms ATTACK: Facebook sez soz for tacky 'Year in Review' FAIL Facebook has apologised to a bloke who moaned about the free-content ad network's recent "Year in Review" feature, after the firm's clumsy algorithms tastelessly inserted painful, personal highlights from 2014. The latest creepy function offered by the Mark Zuckerberg-run company offered a cheap-looking clip art album for …
Yes it's all someone else's fault that you not only took a photograph of your dead father's ashes, you were then forced to post them on Facebook.
I understand that people don't want sad events from their lives waved in front of their faces but really, blaming Facebook for an end of year review that contains images they posted? What if they find a photograph of a deceased relative in a draw? Will they moan about Kodak and Ikea?
"they need to take them into account when programming."
Riiight, because that's an easy task. Tell me, if you look at Mark Duffy's photo again, without reading the caption he added, would you really have guessed that was he's fathers ashes? If so, how did you summise that? Because all I can tell from the photo is a red object on a fence overlooking the body of water... Does it even look remotely morbid?
I understand that people don't want sad events from their lives waved in front of their faces but really, blaming Facebook for an end of year review that contains images they posted?
What kind of idiot comment is that? People are invited to post all kinds of details of their life on Facebook, not just happy-clappy ones. When people are then only offered the single option of "Like", rather than anything more subtle like "Sympathies", then basing a review of your year on "likes" is a disaster waiting to happen. The sun may always shine on Silicon Valley, but in the real world shitty things happen to people as well as nice things. Fasebook should put more thought into the features they offer, rather than blame the Gods of Algorithmic Stupidity when their own lack of foresight bites them in the arse.
@Gordon 10: It's not that you dislike the "post" it's that you dislike the subject i.e. you are showing that you are also "sad that x has died", not "sad that you've posted". This way, a query could then look for positive and negative votes and exclude negative votes.
"Unless you are going to dislike someone's ashes or dead daughter how is it going to help?"
Well that's precisely where it would help. It's far more appropriate in most cases to "dislike" a post about someone's death than it is to "like" it.
Thinking about it compared to normal social interaction, if you see a pot of ashes on someone's mantle do you express sympathy and unhappiness (i.e
disliking the loss) or do you smile, give a thumbs up and say "Hey I like the incinerated corpse of your loved one! Is that new?"
Unless you name is Simon Travaglia and you're visiting the boss it really shouldn't be the last one. Probably not even then.
Point being a social network should represent normal social interaction not a bizarro world where you can only ignore or "like" what other people say/show you.
Presumably FB didn't actually show pictures of deceased relatives but pictures from when they were still alive. (Apart from the ashes case but you only have yourself to blame for uploading that one.) That could be taken as a reason to smile and celebrate the time you had with them.
Oh wait, that doesn't fit with the narcissistic look-at-me FB culture.
Presumably FB didn't actually show pictures of deceased relatives but pictures from when they were still alive
Facebook showed images that had been uploaded by users. They have no idea what those images depict.
I don't understand why folks here are having so much trouble with this. People post content to Facebook. Facebook has extremely limited information about that content - basically the count of "likes". (They could apply heuristic methods like sentiment analysis to the comments, but I've done work in that field, and the state of the art is really not sufficiently suitable for this purpose to eliminate the problem described here.) Based on that extremely limited information, they decided they'd automatically select ("curate") some content to throw back at users. That was a dumb idea, and it was handled poorly (the "great year" tagline).
Facebook doesn't have enough data to implement something like this well. It'll always have a high failure rate. Even human judges wouldn't be able to select an innocuous collection of memorabilia in a significant number of cases.
As for chastising people who posted images they found painful in the review - that's a whopping failure of imagination on the part of the critics. Many people use Facebook to share experiences they find meaningful with family and friends; in that context, sharing a painful image is perfectly reasonable - and having Facebook throw it back in your face at the end of the year is not. And in many cases the images won't have been painful when they were shared (before a loved one died, for example), but may be now. I realize many Reg readers find other human beings mightily puzzling, but perhaps they should STFU rather than criticizing them.
Personally, I dislike Facebook and maintain an account only to receive the occasional event notification and the like. But I'm not so arrogant as to presume anyone who does use it is an idiot. (And I'm pretty damn arrogant.)
I don't particularly want FB to curate my year, or indeed to be shown anyone else's. But WTF, no one makes us open FB.
But I don't post anything of significance on FB anyway. And most of the stuff I see on there would make dross seem good.
I guess it's an issue for the types who live their lives on "social media"
"But I don't post anything of significance on FB anyway."
Save here. In fact my only contact with FB in the last six months has been the every two days email from them asking if I know some of the million or so strangers who live within 10 miles of me or happened to attend the same schools I did sometime over the last 40 years.
"But I don't post anything of significance on FB anyway."
Out of curiosity, I went to see what Facebook had generated as my 'Year in Review'. They didn't have a whole lot to choose from, so selected the only 2 pictures I'd posted - neither of which were relevant or particularly personal to me.
But then, like everyone else here, I'm not exactly the best user to use as an example
> Humans overwriting their memories and making shit up from whole cloth
ITT: Humans memory is volatile and has no error checking.
Well, we do it all the time. You know that most of these "repressed childhood memories" about being violated by parents were actually implanted by the therapists? Good job.
Young adults, aged between 18 and 24, say they frequently lie about their relationships, promotions at work and holidays.
At that age I had even difficulty keeping track of actual reality. Sometimes I really feared I was getting psychotic due to overwork and general stress. And that was before the Interwebs came out of the "text only" phase.
Humans memory is volatile and has no error checking
Indeed. There are loads of methodologically-sound psychological and neurological studies showing just how unreliable human recollection is, and how easy it is for us or others to manipulate our memories.
David McRaney's blog You Are Not So Smart, and his book of the same name, is a nice capsule review of many of the more significant findings in the area.
fecebook had not proven itself trustworthy to carry a pair of scissors without hurting someone. Sure, it sucks to be reminded of bad things that happened in the past year, but should anyone really have been surprised?
Besides, doesn't fecebook have some kind of deelybob in which users can see which posts got the most votes, comments, et cetera? So, why would people need to see in boldface headlines info they can already access (or leave aside) on their own?
Can we (The Register) please stop trawling Twitter for quotes and public opinion. I've noticed the actual news (on the telly) has started doing this, and it drives me insane.
Yup, especially when it seems to replace actual research.
Other news sites managed to include a fairly important point;
the bloke who had his dead daughter displayed to him (she died on her 6th birthday incidentally), didn't post his 'Year in Review'. In fact, because of the painful memories he'd been actively avoiding the 'new feature'.
But because he hadn't configured it, Facebook 'helpfully' stickied it to the top of his timeline for him
The problem here is that this memory review isn't optional. This is an ongoing problem with facebook. These things are forced upon the user without any option other than delete your facebook.
Issue would be solved if facebook offered the user an option when logging in around the end of December and beginning of January, to allow FB to compose a year review and at this point inform the user how their images will be used etc. Anyone who had a particularly difficult year could opt out.
Simple.
I totally agree. But these companies know that, given the choice, a proportion of the userbase will opt out, so they simply don't give you that choice. Why do you think they only have a 'like' button and no 'dislike' - give people that choice and see what they start 'disliking': sponsors, companies, Facebook itself...
about 2.5 years now, and yes I do still post on her birthday and the anniversary of her death and various other days that seem relevant. yes it's still shit and will be for the rest of my life. didn't bother to complain about the review, didn't get an apology, just scrolled by -- seems most people never think about life from any other perspective but their own.
I got a review that included a picture of my partner with my father, who has been dead for 11 years. I don't know how they got that picture--to my knowledge I didn't post it this year.
What I would have liked is a box to tick once that asked whether I wanted to see my "Year in Review", and then boxes to tick to say whether I wanted to post it or customise it.
What I ended up doing was posting it to my Timeline but marking it "Only me". As I rarely visit my timeline, it'll be buried for all time. I trust that next year FB will make it clear that people who don't want to see this or post it can stop it easily and once.
Absolutely! When Year in Review first appears on your timeline it quite clearly says "Only you can see this post". You then have the option to review, edit and share, share as it is, or delete. You don't even have to look at the whole thing; the initial post to your own timeline is only shown with a couple of pictures.
Maybe the problem is with you.
I hate Facebook more than most but come on. It just shows how isolated people in our so-called society really are, if you only realise you're a depressing person when a computer algorithm points it out.
In real life social interaction, people will tell you when you're being a downer. Maybe they will try and cheer you up. Protip: if lots of people are trying to cheer you up, you must obviously look unhappy.
But if you post it on Facebook, your half assed effort to reach out will be met with half assed sympathy. And it's exactly what you deserve if you go around posting things like "hey guess which one of my relatives died today, lol".
It still amazes me that, 1, people use Facebook despite its horrible user interface, and 2, that people use Facebook at all (or any other social media).
I live technology, after all, it is how I make my living. But I'm not much of a consumer of it outside of work. I have the latest phones and tablets for personal use, but beyond that, I can't be bothered by it. When I get home after work, I'm effectively unplugged. No facebook, Pintrist, whatever.
The internet is a tool and is used as such, but my personal life is exactly that, PERSONAL. Why people insist on telling the world every detail of their lives is beyond me. It seems impersonal and shallow at best. At worst, everything you post on facebook or any other social media site should be considered as evidence that can be used against you. No thanks.I'll stick to the real world and meaningful relationships.
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