Facebook's 'Year in Review' shows man his dead daughter

Social media giant apologizes for reopening wounds with app

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Facebook has apologized to a grieving father for the wounds it reopened with its "Year in Review" app.

The app   automatically compiles photos posted by users to create a personalized digital summary of highlights from the past year. A preview is sent to each user's news feed.

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Eric Meyer called his preview "jarring."

It showed a photo of his dead daughter's face surrounded by illustrations of dancing figures and balloons, with the caption "Eric here's what your year looked like!"

Meyer's daughter died on her sixth birthday in June.

He acknowledged the app was generated by a computer algorithm, but suggested Facebook let users to opt out of the feature before it appears in their news feed.

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

Facebook's product manager for the "Year in Review" app, Jonathan Gheller,  told the Washington Post he's reached out to Meyer and is very sorry.

" [The app] was awesome for a lot of people, but clearly in this case we brought him grief rather than joy," he said, adding that the company is looking at ways to improve the app and will take Meyer's concerns into account.