Facebook apologizes to grieving father for pain caused by 'Year in Review' feature

Facebook has apologised for the grief its new feature "Year In Review" brought to a web designer who named the app as "inadvertent algorithmic cruelty " because it forced him to relive the pain of losing his daughter as the feature generated a scrapbook of selected photographs from the user's past one year on the social networking site including pictures of his late daughter Rebecca.

Eric Meyer, who is credited with advocating for web development standards such as cascading style sheets (CSS), blamed designers and programmers for repeatedly showing him the advertisement of Year In Review that showed him pictures of his deceased daughter on Facebook.

Jonathan Gheller, the Facebook product manager for the app has also contacted Meyer and apologised for the preview, reported News.com.au.

The team behind the app is considering ways to improve it for next time and will take Meyer's concerns into account, said Gheller. (A