{"id":19846,"date":"2020-03-03T23:30:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T23:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=19846"},"modified":"2020-03-03T23:30:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T23:30:37","slug":"even-after-blocking-an-ex-on-facebook-the-platform-promotes-painful-reminders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/even-after-blocking-an-ex-on-facebook-the-platform-promotes-painful-reminders\/","title":{"rendered":"Even after blocking an ex on Facebook, the platform promotes painful reminders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Pinter<\/a>, University of Colorado Boulder<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Abstract features interesting research and the people behind it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Anthony Pinter<\/a>, a Ph.D. student in information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently completed a study<\/a> on people\u2019s experiences with upsetting and unexpected reminders of an ex on Facebook.<\/p>\n

His team\u2019s findings are examples of algorithmic cruelty<\/a> \u2013 instances in which algorithms are designed to do something and do it well, but end up backfiring because they can\u2019t fully grasp the nuances of human relationships and behavior. <\/p>\n

How has social media made breakups more difficult?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anthony Pinter:<\/strong> Breaking up with a loved one has always meant making difficult choices: who gets the couch, who gets the fridge, who gets the cat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n Anthony Pinter.<\/span>
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But before social media, once the messy details were sorted, it wasn\u2019t too difficult to create the physical, mental and emotional space that research has shown to help with the healing process<\/a>. In the past, you could simply stop going to your ex\u2019s favorite coffee shop. You could box up photos and put them in storage.<\/p>\n

Social media has complicated things. Platforms like Facebook are designed to encourage connecting with your network and reminiscing about the past. It recommends upcoming events<\/a>, suggests people to add as friends<\/a>, resurfaces old memories and photos<\/a> and highlights what your friends are doing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But after a breakup, you probably don\u2019t want to be alerted about a new friend your ex has made on your news feed. Nor do you want to see an old photo with your ex reappear as a \u201cMemory.\u201d And with access to your ex\u2019s online life just a search and a click away, it\u2019s easy to succumb to forms of \u201cFacebook stalking<\/a>,\u201d in which you periodically check in on their profile to see what they\u2019re up to and whom they\u2019re hanging out with. <\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Facebook has been shown to prolong the healing process<\/a> of a breakup. Conversely, you might also start to realize your ex has already moved on, which can be just as painful.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust block your ex,\u201d you\u2019ll hear people say. Why isn\u2019t this enough?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pinter<\/strong>: First, blocking or unfriending isn\u2019t as simple as it sounds. It can be done in as little as three clicks. But once you\u2019ve done it, it\u2019s hard to walk back from; if you ever decide to unblock someone or refriend them, social media platforms will often alert the ex that you\u2019ve done so \u2013 which can send ambiguous signals and expectations.<\/p>\n

But yes, platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have features meant to prevent these unwanted encounters \u2013 unfollow, unfriend or block. A few years ago, Facebook even developed a feature called Take A Break<\/a>, which effectively mutes someone for a set period of time. <\/p>\n

However, people are still seeing reminders of their exes on social media \u2013 even when they\u2019ve actively taken advantage of features that supposedly prevent these encounters. <\/p>\n

My colleagues and I conducted in-depth interviews with 19 people who had had an unexpected and upsetting reminder of an ex on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One participant mentioned that the mother of an ex\u2019s new partner was suggested as a possible friend. Another saw their ex commenting on a mutual friend\u2019s post. In one case, an old photo that Facebook resurfaced via the Memories feature \u2013 from a beach vacation the two had taken when they\u2019d been a couple \u2013 didn\u2019t even include an image of the interviewee\u2019s ex. But being prompted to think about that vacation was upsetting enough.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s really going on here?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Pinter:<\/strong> This is happening because the algorithms still don\u2019t fully understand humans.<\/p>\n

While you can tell Facebook you don\u2019t want to see your ex anymore, the algorithm doesn\u2019t realize that this might also include peripheral reminders of your ex, like a photo of his or her best friend, or a comment he or she has made on a mutual friend\u2019s wall.<\/p>\n

Context matters<\/a>, but algorithms often don\u2019t have the ability to understand it. Even though that photo from the beach might not have anyone in it, it\u2019s loaded with memories that you\u2019d rather not think about.<\/p>\n

In our work, we want to bring attention to what we call the \u201csocial periphery\u201d \u2013 the satellites of a relationship, romantic or otherwise. Systems like Facebook are built to cultivate community, but the algorithms that undergird the system often rely on simplistic representations of people\u2019s experiences like \u201crelationship status\u201d or \u201cblocked.\u201d Features meant to prevent upsetting encounters in the wake of a breakup or other fraught events similarly rely on these simplistic settings, ignoring the realities of a social periphery. <\/p>\n

To the algorithm, the suggestion of the ex\u2019s new partner\u2019s mother is a perfectly reasonable suggestion \u2013 you probably share mutual friends that alert some sort of internal metric. But a human would know better than to make that suggestion.<\/p>\n

Why do these findings matter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pinter:<\/strong> Algorithms are becoming more integrated into our everyday lives<\/a>, and social media isn\u2019t the only place where we\u2019re seeing these undesirable outcomes occur. For example, as people begin to rely more heavily on voice assistants like Siri or Alexa to send texts, we inevitably run into situations in which the programs mishear us and, for example, send a wildly inappropriate message to a boss or parent.<\/a><\/p>\n

Our findings present a challenge for designers and developers: How can we create algorithms that are better attuned to the deep, lived experiences of the humans who will use these systems? It\u2019s unlikely that there is a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. On Facebook, features like Take a Break or blocking can be seen as important steps. But it\u2019s clear that there\u2019s a lot more work to do.<\/p>\n

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.<\/em> Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a>.]\"The<\/p>\n

Anthony Pinter<\/a>, Ph.D. Student in Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anthony Pinter, University of Colorado Boulder The Abstract features interesting research and the people behind it. Anthony Pinter, a Ph.D. student in information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, recently completed a study on people\u2019s experiences with upsetting and unexpected reminders of an ex on Facebook. His team\u2019s findings are examples of algorithmic cruelty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[2341,7742,7741,483,488,459,457,702,7740,7743],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19848,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19846\/revisions\/19848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}