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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the sunrise-sunset dept.

Tech writer Eric Meyer calls out the designers and programmers at Facebook who had an intrusive idea for a "Year in Review" app.

He blogs

Knowing what kind of year I'd had, though, I avoided making one of my own. I kept seeing them pop up in my feed, created by others, almost all of them with the default caption, "It's been a great year! Thanks for being a part of it." Which was, by itself, jarring enough, the idea that any year I was part of could be described as great.

Still, they were easy enough to pass over, and I did. Until today, when I got this in my feed, exhorting me to create one of my own. "Eric, here's what your year looked like!"

A picture of my daughter, who is dead. Who died this year.

Yes, my year looked like that. True enough. My year looked like the now-absent face of my little girl. It was still unkind to remind me so forcefully.

And I know, of course, that this is not a deliberate assault. This inadvertent algorithmic cruelty is the result of code that works in the overwhelming majority of cases, reminding people of the awesomeness of their years, showing them selfies at a party or whale spouts from sailing boats or the marina outside their vacation house.

But 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.

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  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by SuperCharlie on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:05PM

    by SuperCharlie (2939) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:05PM (#130491)

    If ya didnt want to look at it, ya shouldnt have posted it up to be regurgitated on the interwebs forever. Just sayin..

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by francois.barbier on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:32PM

      by francois.barbier (651) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:32PM (#130494)

      And this year on SoylentNews, your best submission was...

      He doesn't use Facebook correctly.
      You are supposed to only post pictures of you smiling in front of dishes.
      And forward those interesting blurbs of text about happiness.

      • (Score: 2) by francois.barbier on Thursday January 01 2015, @01:25AM

        by francois.barbier (651) on Thursday January 01 2015, @01:25AM (#130667)

        Whoever modded me troll doesn't understand sarcasm. I'm sorry for them.
        Anyway, happy new year to you, Whoever you are.
        And sorry for your loss!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Ryuugami on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:00PM

      by Ryuugami (2925) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:00PM (#130501)

      If ya didnt want to look at it, ya shouldnt have posted it up to be regurgitated on the interwebs forever. Just sayin..

      What. The. Fuck. It must be a conditioned reflex or something to flame everyone that posts anything on Facebook, regardless of the circumstances and whether they're to blame or not.

      If he posted her obituary or something, yeah, sure, but it sounded to me like he posted her picture while she was still alive. Unable to see into the future, he didn't know she would die later in the year, and wasn't about to erase her entire Internet presence once she did. Seriously, man.

      FB should've made this opt-in instead of doing the usual of forcing it on all users. As TFS said, not everyone wants to be reminded of how their year was.

      --
      If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:27PM

        by VLM (445) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:27PM (#130512)

        FB should've made this opt-in instead of doing the usual of forcing it on all users.

        FB is already opt in. Also the year in review is for all practical purposes opt in. I have an account and I only log in occasionally (like once a month and they spam me to death that I should log in more often), and I saw the year in review thing and kinda rolled my eyes "ick a corporation trying to be all schmoozey sappy holiday, this is going to be grade A barf-ola" and scrolled right on by. I was motivated to pick up my phone minutes ago per your comment, and check the app and I can't even figure out how to access the year in review thing or find it (which is not unusual, facebook app has a horrible UI). Once you've got the users locked in, you don't need good design, in fact it would be surprising if they spent any effort at all on good design.

        Forcing on all their users would be like changing their goofy logo at the top of their pages to goatse guy. That would be kinda hard to avoid. This year in review "feature" or "misfeature" is hard to find, not hard to avoid.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:51PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:51PM (#130517)

          ...like changing their goofy logo at the top of their pages to goatse guy.

          What a big improvement that would be: from faecebook to goatse, I mean.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:27PM (#130513)

        B-b-b-b-but Facebook

      • (Score: 1, Troll) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:17PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:17PM (#130583) Journal

        Uhhh...its intrusionbook, the most spammy nosy POS that has ever been created for narcissists the world over, and you are seriously bitching that its being its usual nosy irritating self?

          Bitching about FB spamming all the info YOU UPLOAD is like bitching that the whorehouse smells like sex and ass, you really should have expected that going in. Its not like they are gonna change one of the umpteen features designed to appeal to their self absorbed customers in the off chance that one of their tens of millions of users may have lost a loved one AND left all their pics on there AND doesn't want to see the pics that he callously left for all his relatives to see like a right asshole. Remember that folks, this "victim" left these photos for all his other relatives to see so apparently he didn't give a fuck about grandma, any aunts, uncles, or friends, just that HE didn't have to see the pics...that he left on the site.

        So while I'm sorry for anybody losing a kid he does sound like the kind of self centered self absorbed asshat that FB was designed for. If he never wanted to see the pics? he could have hit the delete and saved not only himself but his kinfolk from seeing these pics if they were so painful, just saying.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:58PM (#130624)

      The problem is that everyone plus dog and cat are on FB - and then FB make arbitrary choices for them - stuf pops up whether you want or not, your images are shared like it or not, your face is tagged like it or not. People haven't had the brainpower to break the addiction and move on. Maybe this really thoughtless move by FB will prompt a few to vote with their mouseclick and leave. I am sure there are many other victims of this as its certain more than just one person had a crappy 2014.

  • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by TheRaven on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:05PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:05PM (#130502) Journal

    Not only was this covered on Slashdot ages ago, it also made its way around mainstream news outlets. The story isn't even on the front page of BBC news anymore, having been pushed off by other things.

    Please implement something like the +/- buttons that Slashdot had on stories for a while, so that we have some mechanism for voting against these trollish articles by gewg_ (or just stop posting his crap - no one likes it), or put them in a section that we can filter.

    --
    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:17PM

      by VLM (445) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:17PM (#130507)

      I've noticed that SN often looks like HN or /. or theregister on a sometimes up to one week long tape delay, but it generates a new, interesting aspect where time has been granted to think about the topic in detail, research, review and consider other peoples opinions, etc. That's how I can sometimes make posts here that look like I spent some time googling specific facts and figures about a minute after a story goes up... because I did do just that... last week or a couple days ago when I first heard of the story, and as long as nothing has changed since, I get away with it. It makes for more interesting discussion, and inherently improves the 24-hour-news-cycle aspect of the news because now its up to a one-week-news-cycle. Or TLDR is its a feature not a bug.

      You also separately drift off into an issue of is it clickbait or not, I don't think this one is that bad, I've seen worse clickbait, this really isn't that bad. "You won't believe what was in his facebook year in review" would be a pretty bad clickbait.

      So in both separate areas of your argument, I disagree somewhat, for different reasons.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:44PM (#130540)

      Despite all that coverage which seems to have bothered you, I have seen no discussion of the most important point of the story:

      > inadvertent algorithmic cruelty

      This is a phrase that is coming to define modern life. The more we automate our lives (or rather the more we have automation and regulation pushed on our lives) the more we lose simple human dignity. I like Schneier's term - "the war on dignity" which he coined for anti-terror bullshit like ridiculous TSA rules but is much more broadly applicable.

      This is an issue that everyone involved in any sort of system design needs to think about long and hard. The people who design a system have a specific perception of how people will interact with it. But, when humans are involved, it is nearly impossible to fully capture all of those possible interactions in the system's design. In fact, it is nearly impossible to anticipate them. The end result is something like the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil where an "error" (anything not anticipated by the system designers) results in an enormous amount of hassle for the people affected.

      There is also a more subtle effect, because of that hassle people just give up trying to do what comes naturally to them and end up conforming to the system's view of the world. It is a sort of feedback loop that pushes people to conform and too much of that can be really unhealthy for a society because conformity is the opposite of innovation. We risk stagnation and stratification, especially the more Big Data techniques are used to measure and set policies based on the measurements of today rather than supporting change and progress.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by naubol on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:27PM

        by naubol (1918) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:27PM (#130568)

        The more we automate our lives (or rather the more we have automation and regulation pushed on our lives) the more we lose simple human dignity.

        Hmm, I'm not sure you're correct in this. We are always keenly aware of our indignities, so there is bias there. Especially when things change it is easy to be cognizant of what we're losing and more difficult to perceive what we've gained. How would you accurately quantify respect for human dignity, especially given the fluid nature of the human perspective?

        For me, I feel that there are a few ways that my perception of my dignity is enhanced by automation. Automated systems allow me to avoid dehumanizing social interactions that were prevalent in my youth, like waiting interminably in a line for some purpose or other. Given the random access nature of knowledge on the internet, I can often sneak a peak at information necessary for some circumstance where the lack of it would potentially embarrass me or put me in an inferior position relative to others. Also, I can better plan, contact, organize, and manage my relationships with others with less potential for offense, forgetfulness, missed opportunities, etc due to technological advancements at least relying on automation.

        So while I feel I have lost some things, I also see more opportunities. It is difficult for me to say with confidence, and I feel 2014 has been more comfortable for my person than 1999.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @07:56PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @07:56PM (#130607)

          The difference is that all of your examples are tools you choose to use. The problems start when you don't have a choice, when "exception handling" is an afterthought or not even part of the system. The facebook story is an example of really poor exception handling. The more that people are required to use automated processes, the more important exception handling becomes but it seems like the reverse is the case - the more automation, the less possible it is to handle failures and the cost of those failures almost universally are paid by the person, not the organization imposing the system.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:18PM (#130635)

        The devs were working from a Venn diagram|flowchart that was incomplete|poorly constructed.
        An "edge case" that has significant consequences is NOT an edge case.
        An "edge case" that causes your system to go into an unstable state means that the dev didn't do the whole job.

        Too bad you're not higher up in the thread.
        You deserve a better score.

        -- gewg_

    • (Score: 1) by ghost on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:15PM

      by ghost (4467) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:15PM (#130580) Journal
      • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 31 2014, @07:26PM

        by isostatic (365) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @07:26PM (#130599) Journal

        Doesn't work when you access from a multitude of devices and platforms. Jon Katz was easy to block when you were logged in (although SN doesn't allow you to be logged in from more than 1 decice at a time)

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:57PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:57PM (#130623)

          > Please give us a way to block the _gewg/Hugh Pickens inflammatory political drivel

          Hhm, I don't see you contributing much to the "non-drivel" discussions like the recent one on open sourcing a phone platform in china.
          But I do see you posting here and 4 times in the cuba one.
          How about instead of whining you be the change you want to see?

          • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:50PM

            by isostatic (365) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:50PM (#130643) Journal

            I used to rely on slashdot to keep me uptodate with the technology world. Not the articles, but the comments. These comments devolved into partisan fighting, there were still gems, but they were few and far between.

            As such while I'm happy to dive in on certain areas (flights from a passenger perspective - although most of my energy goes to flyertalk, trek, where I end up on trekbbs, and TV, especially TV News), I don't have much to add to actual real science and tech, beyond reading it.

            I'd love to find out more about "Worm Discovered in South Korean Nuclear Control Systems" or "Facebook Rewards Researcher for Reporting Critical Vulnerability", but the comments aren't there, and I can't post as I don't know enough. "Quake on an Oscilloscope" had some brilliant comments, far beyond anything I could add to a conversation, so why would I add it? I want more comments sections like that. Perhaps I'm unusual.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by lizardloop on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:22PM

    by lizardloop (4716) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:22PM (#130510) Journal

    Not really sure what this guy is trying to say? On the one hand he comes across all hurt and upset. Then on the other hand he says he realises it was nothing personal and it would be unreasonable for Facebook to figure out whether the picture was appropriate or not.

    He also states that you can hide the app in question so that it doesn't bother you any more.

    Is this a bigger question about developers trying to write more thoughtful apps? I suppose if someone at Facebook had thought "hey, maybe we shouldn't just show random pictures from someone's albums to them, they could be upsetting pictures" Facebook might have saved this guy some upset. At the same time if they had constantly worried about "potentially upsetting someone" then might not have made the app at all and by all accounts it seems to be pretty popular.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:03PM (#130531)

      Maybe, like Burgess Meredith's character in Grumpier Old Men, it is simply that he really likes that story. It started life as a blog post, not a news item. They don't have to have points.

  • (Score: 1) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:35PM

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:35PM (#130515)

    Many people have sore issues they don't like to be reminded of. The year my father passed away, seeing other people with their dads having a good time made me sad. People who end up in wheelchairs probably don't like being reminded of their new handicap when people walk past them. Can it be avoided? No. You're not going to abolish people walking in the street and having fun with their dads, just because it hurts a few people.

    What I'm trying to say is, Eric Meyer's problem, sadly, is exactly that: his problem. Maybe a majority of people do enjoy getting a shite cheerful automated message from Facebook. He is part of a very small minority of people for whom the automated message ended up being cruel, but that's no reason to prevent everybody else from having a normal Facebook experience - assuming there are people who dig the Facebook experience of course, which I personally find incredible.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:48PM

      by Bill, Shooter Of Bul (3170) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:48PM (#130528)

      Its a shitty algorithm and a bad user experience. That's what he's complaining about. Facebook just assumed that every highly rated picture was a positive event. Its AI gone haywire. His recommendations are to improve the User experience, not to say that other people can't have fun.

      On a side note, my year in review was all pictures of plants. Whee! such fun! So Plant!
      I think the best part of it to me is that the amazing things I did this year, were not put on facebook, but were actually shared with friends and family in person.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:58PM (#130545)

        > Its AI gone haywire

        This "year in review" thing is conceptually identical to Facebook's primary business - targeted marketing. The goal is to figure out stuff that you are interested in and show you more of it (so that you will buy it). Facebook is valued at $200 billion and presumably this is about as good as facebook can get at this sort of targeting because they are using your own pictures, the search space is tiny compared to open ended advertising. And yet it's full of crap.

        If I were an advertiser paying facebook for ad impressions I would be concerned that not only is their targeting kind of poor but perhaps it can never work, that algorithmically understanding people enough to figure out what they will like and will be interested in is impossible to do with any sort of reliability. That the advertising we see today, where 90% of it is to show you ads for stuff you already bought 2 weeks ago is the best it will ever get.

        As a non-advertiser I would be wondering if this crap is the best that facebook's current model can do, what kind of desperation moves are they going to make when the market figures it out and business starts to tank? All that data they've collected, what other purposes will it be used for? After all, facebook deletes nothing, ever. They just mark it as hidden so it looks like it was deleted to the naive user.

    • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:19PM

      by theluggage (1797) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:19PM (#130585)

      Can it be avoided? No.

      Having also lost a family member this year I'm inclined to agree with you in the broader case of all those unwelcome reminders - you just have to take them on the chin. However, "personalised advertising" is a new development bringing a new set of potential agonies, that advertisers really need to think about before doing this sort of thing. What Facebook did could have been avoided. They could have just sent round a generic advert for their 'year in review' service instead of taking it upon themselves to try and build it automatically without, apparently, sparing a thought for what could go wrong. It was a crass idea.

      You're not going to abolish people walking in the street and having fun with their dads,

      Facebook weren't walking down the street having fun: they were making a cynical attempt to boost traffic and make money by sending "personalized" ads that they really hadn't thought through. That's the problem: if you try and make your advertising personal, then people are going to take it personally.

      He is part of a very small minority of people

      Sadly, the number of people who have had a bad year for one reason or another is not a "very small minority". Maybe the number of us who've lost a close family member this year is relatively small (but, with the size of Facebook's user base, probably still in the thousands), but the proportion of users with deceased friends or relatives, dead pets, failed romances and other dramas or unpleasantness that they'd rather not be robotically urged to celebrate must be pretty high.

      I'm not proposing bans, regulation or lawsuits: its Facebook and others like them who need to get a clue about this sort of thing. Upsetting customers is bad for profit.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:00PM (#130610)

        > but, with the size of Facebook's user base, probably still in the thousands

        I think it is likely to be much higher, the US has about 2.5M deaths per year. I think it is reasonable to say that each one of those people had at least one person that qualified as a close family member. Even with a skew to youth, that's probably 100,000+ such users.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:31PM (#130525)

    Facebook, for slow-learners that like to create their own problems.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Dunbal on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:52PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:52PM (#130529)

    There is life without facebook.

    • (Score: 2) by jpkunst on Wednesday December 31 2014, @04:02PM

      by jpkunst (2310) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @04:02PM (#130547)

      Exactly. I'd mod you up, but since I don't have mod points, I'll just agree with you. You (general "you") don't actually need Facebook.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:12PM (#130563)

      Obligatory reply to "There is life without x": Sure, if you call that living.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by arashi no garou on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:26PM

      by arashi no garou (2796) on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:26PM (#130567)

      I'll venture so far as to say that life without Facebook, even if you're all smiles and had a stupendous year and so on, is less depressing and better for both mental and physical health. I decided to keep my Facebook account so I can stay in contact with a couple of long distance family members and friends, but I only check in about once a week. I don't have the app on any of my devices, I don't have it bookmarked in my browser, and the only email notification I get is on a login from a new device (which everyone who uses the service should turn on). I have to make a conscious effort to visit the site, and I always log out once I'm done.

      So far, I've found that in the past I was spending about 30 minutes a day on that site, since reduced to about 20 minutes a week (most of it catching up on and replying to family messages and posts). That's three extra hours per week I've recovered, which I am now spending on learning to code. Yes, I'm still sitting in front of the computer, but I feel like I've been productive instead of wasting my time. I feel like I've accomplished something even if I don't write a single line of code for that session.

      As for the physical side, I've discovered that I tended to snack while browsing Facebook, but I don't snack when studying. So that's at least an hour's worth of consuming processed junk food erased from my week as well.

      If I can convince the few people I hold on to Facebook for to start communicating with me via other channels, I can drop it altogether. As it is, it already feels like a collar has been removed from my neck.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:07PM (#130562)

    When I read this story several days ago, there was also an apology from Mr. Meyer when he received immediate contact back from Facebook that he wasn't expecting at all, and also that the designer of the Year in Review doesn't deserve too much flack because Mr. Meyer realized his condition wasn't the norm or who it was aimed at..

    Puts a significantly different twist on the story, to me, to not put that bit in....

  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:19PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:19PM (#130584)

    When i die, i'll still be sending "Happy Birthday!" notices from my solar powered raspberry pi that is camouflaged near public wifi. Emails will auto-reply with something like "Sorry, i died $years ago and won't be able to respond with anything other than pre-recorded responses to keywords in your messages: I also liked cats! Please tell me more."

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.