Facebook apologises for Year-in-Review posts

THE Year-in-Review Facebook post that popped up in your feed recently may have brought back good memories… or maybe it didn’t.

The website apologised to Eric Meyer who was reminded of the death of his six-year-old daughter when he saw pictures of her on the automatic post.

Facebook had used an algorithm that pulled in the photos that had been liked the most, which didn’t legislate for showing painful images.

‘[The app] was awesome for a lot of people, but clearly in this case we brought him grief rather than joy, It’s valuable feedback,’ Jonathan Gheller, who works for Facebook, told the Washington Post.

‘We can do better — I’m very grateful he (Meyer) took the time in his grief to write the blog post.’

Meyer, who works in web design and as a writer, had spoken about his pain of being reminded about his daughter who died of brain cancer earlier this year.

‘To show me Rebecca’s face and say “Here’s what your year looked like!” is jarring,’ he wrote on his website.

‘It feels wrong, and coming from an actual person, it would be wrong. Coming from code, it’s just unfortunate.’

Others had less serious reasons to be angered, with some upset they were reminded of dead pets and old relationships.