Facebook Says “Sorry” For Year In Review Feature

If you’ve been on Facebook for more than five seconds in the past couple of weeks, you’ve undoubtedly been pestered to check out your “year in review”. This feature, which Facebook seems to tout at the end of every year, allows you to get a quick snapshot of the main highlights of your previous year through the social network. It looks at all of the likes and comments your posts have received to see which of them have been the most popular, and those are then the posts it chooses to highlight for you. While that sounds great in theory, not everyone wants to remember some of the things that happened in the past year. A couple of cases in point: a father who lost his young daughter and a man whose home caught fire. Both of the horrible stories were incredibly “popular” based on the amount of activity they garnered, but they obviously aren’t anything close to the kind of events we want to look back on with fondness. Others have been reminded of lost pets, etc. As a result of mix-ups like this, (and many blogs/tweets written that detailed the problem) Facebook has apologized for some of the quirks with the Year in Review feature.

Some of those who’ve been hurt by this feature have actually been personally apologized to by the manager of Facebook’s Year in Review, Jonathan Gheller, which is definitely an appreciated gesture.

Because Year in Review uses an algorithm to figure out what has happened in the last year, it’s bound to have some success stories and, sadly, some painful memories as well.

Did Facebook bring back some sad times for you as well? Let us know in the comments section below!

[Image via Slashgear]

SOURCE: The Guardian