New Option to Filter ‘Depressing’ Memories From Facebook
(Photo from Huffington Post)
Facebook’s popular ‘On This Day’ feature has been widely used by users around the world, sharing friendships and anniversaries and throwback pictures. However, since people share both good and bad news on social media, some memories would do more harm than good when resurfaced. Recently, Facebook has received much criticism for this feature.
Currently, the features allows the user to filter out certain people and certain dates that might trigger painful memories. It is a fairly simple feature where the user is fully in control to customize – everything is manual and Facebook does nothing to predict the dates for us. Applying concepts learned in class, maybe network data could help Facebook guess and automatically block/filter memories from the On This Day notification. Keywords and hashtags could also be signs that a memory should not be brought back. Also, analyzing network components and observing the activity of nodes with strong paths to each other – if a Facebook user suddenly becomes inactive and others suddenly start posting about them, posting pictures, tagging #RIP, posting on their wall, it might be a sign that the user had passed away. The friends in his immediate circle of friends (found through network data) would automatically have memories surrounding this date blocked from the ‘On This Day’ feature.
Also, a breakup with a spouse could be another kind of painful memory that the user might not want in his/her daily ‘On This Day’ notification. These could also be filtered out in a similar fashion: Facebook could find the dates of the change from “In a relationship with” or “Married to” to “Single” and filter out pictures with the person the user was in a relationship with.
But for now, this feature is fairly elementary and is 100% manual and up to the user to customize to his/her own needs. It’s pacified some of the previous criticism – and allows for more openings for more improvement to the social media network, allowing it to more intelligently analyze your activity online.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebooks-on-this-day-filters_561d61cce4b028dd7ea5796b?utm_hp_ref=social-media