Facebook pledges to stop asking users to wish dead friends happy birthday by fixing AI
Facebook has admitted accidentally asking users to invite dead friends to events or wish them happy birthday, as the company pledged to fix the issue.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Office, said it was overhauling its algorithms to avoid such faux pas and “minimize experiences that might be painful”.
Her comments come as the social media giant announced a raft of changes to the way it deals with the accounts of dead users.
After a Facebook learns a user has died it “memorialises” the account and adds the word “remembering” in front of the person’s name.
In a blogpost published on Tuesday, Ms Sandberg: “Once an account is memorialized, we use AI to help keep the profile from showing up in places that might cause distress, like recommending that person be invited to events or sending a birthday reminder to their friends. We’re working to get better and faster at this.”
In recent years the company has been accused of being “cruel” after its algorithms brought up dead friends and relatives in places were users didn’t expect.
In 2014 the company apologised after its “year in review” feature, which algorithmically turned users’ posts into a short video, included tragic and distressing events for some.
At the time, website developer Eric Meyer, wrote a blogpost after the feature used a picture of his four-year-old daughter who had died that year. Mr Meyer, who is from the US, described the act as “inadvertent algorithmic cruelty” and later received a personal apology from the company. Other people complained that the feature had used pictures of parents ashes or dead pets.
Ms Sandberg also announced yesterday that the company is granting more controls to “legacy contacts”, whom users nominate while alive to take control of their profile after death.
These include adding a ‘tributes’ section to memorialised pages and allowing legacy contacts to edit who sees posts from the deceased account.
“We want Facebook to be a place where people can support each other while honoring the memory of their loved ones,” added Ms Sandberg.
