Facebook apologise to grieving father for ‘inadvertent cruelty’

SOCIAL media giant Facebook wasn’t thinking of everyone when it designed its Year In Review app, and a grieving father has let them know why.

SOCIAL media giant Facebook wasn’t thinking when it designed its Year In Review app, and a grieving father has explained why.

The automated app is intended to aggregate highlights from 2014 but for many the virtual photo album triggers painful memories.

In the case of web designer Eric Meyer, a photo of his recently deceased six-year-old daughter appeared in his timeline, surrounded by graphics of partygoers and confetti and with the default exclamation: “Eric, here’s what your year looked like!”

Mr Meyer’s daughter Rebecca died from a brain tumour on June 7 — her sixth birthday — in her parents’ arms.

Grief came calling ... Eric Meyer got a shock when his daughter’s face appeared in his Facebook newsfeed, surrounded by partygoers. Picture: meyerweb.com

“I didn’t go looking for grief this afternoon, but it found me anyway, and I have designers and programmers to thank for it,” he wrote on his blog. “In this case, the designers and programmers are somewhere at Facebook.”

Mr Meyer had noticed his friends’ years in review popping up in his newsfeed, already a bit unnerved at the idea of so many “great” years. They were jarring but easy enough to pass over, until he too was enjoined to brag about his year.

"Algorithms are essentially thoughtless. They model certain decision flows, but once you run them, no more thought occurs." -Eric Meyer

— Alvin Pang (@alfpang) December 26, 2014

@MediaLawProf my friend's house burned down @doctorow pic.twitter.com/aWQy2rqn3J

— PDA (@neurodruid) December 25, 2014

Mr Meyer is even-handed in his blog post, titled ‘Inadevertent Algorithmic Cruelty’, understanding the hurt is not deliberate. Nevertheless, he reasons, “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.”

“To show me Rebecca’s face and say “Here’s what your year looked like!” is jarring,” he writes. “It feels wrong, and coming from an actual person, it would be wrong. Coming from code, it’s just unfortunate.”

The problem arises because the number of interactions and pictures an image gets on Facebook is among the strongest signals in determining which pictures are used for the Year in Review. “ It isn’t easy to programmatically figure out if a picture has a ton of Likes because it’s hilarious, astounding, or heartbreaking,” writes Mr Meyer.

Eric taught us how to make the web. Through his pain, he keeps teaching us. http://t.co/pDKbmqyFrY

— Joe McGill (@joemcgill) December 25, 2014

Eric Meyer reminds us all that designers and developers need empathy at the core of our work. http://t.co/JWVuveN1pQ

— L'avenir ç'est nous. (@laprice) December 24, 2014

And so he suggests a more empathetic design. One that would take into account people having a bad year, suggesting a couple of obvious fixes to start with: “first, don’t pre-fill a picture until you’re sure the user actually wants to see pictures from their year. And second, instead of pushing the app at people, maybe ask them if they’d like to try a preview — just a simple yes or no. If they say no, ask if they want to be asked again later, or never again. And then, of course, honour their choices.”

Mr Meyer wrote that the ads kept returning in his feed, “rotating through different fun-and-fabulous backgrounds” but always featuring the image of his lost daughter.

Jonathan Gheller, the Facebook product manager for the app has since contacted Mr Meyer and told the Washington Post he is personally very sorry for the pain the preview feature caused. “[The app] was awesome for a lot of people, but clearly in this case we brought him grief rather than joy,” he said. The team behind the app is considering ways to improve it for next time and will take Meyer’s concerns into account, he said, although he did not comment on if they would follow Mr Meyer’s specific suggestions.

“It’s valuable feedback,” Mr Gheller said. “We can do better — I’m very grateful he took the time in his grief to write the blog post.”