Earlier this year, Facebook began testing a feature called “Memorable Stories,” which showed users a random-seeming selection of old status updates in the site’s sidebar. Within days, users began complaining that the feature showed status updates that they didn’t want to be reminded of or, even worse, that deleted status updates were showing up.
Today, All Facebook highlighted a new level of user dissatisfaction – a Facebook group protesting the feature all together, asking the company to either shut it down or give users more control.
The group, which has more than 1,100 members, asks that Facebook either “Lose ‘Memorable Status Updates’ – or Give us Control.” Users are posting a variety of similar complaints about the feature on the group’s wall, saying that it is showing them content they may not want to be reminded of and, again, that it is showing deleted status updates.
When we asked Facebook about this last time, a spokesperson told us that “This was in fact a bug that was to (sic) the 1% of people in the test for Memorable Stories. We turned it off when we discovered this and fixed it immediately. To be clear, we were only showing people their own status updates, meaning they were not visible to anyone’s friends.”
More than one user complains on the group’s wall, however, that the feature has shown them not theirs but friends’ deleted status updates, calling it a violation of privacy.
“Funny thing is, my boyfriend went on his facebook and completely removed his feed from public sight,” writes one user. “It STILL let me see his old statuses. A breach of privacy policy me think. Careful Facebook.”
While showing a user their own deleted status updates raises some questions, showing them friends’ deleted status updates is another thing entirely.
A Facebook spokesperson had this to day:
We take reports of potential bugs very seriously and began investigating this yesterday. So far, we haven’t been able to replicate the reported issue. We’ve contacted the person who reported it to ask for more information.
[Image via All Facebook.]
