Was 2014 the best year of your life? No? Facebook seems to assume that no one has had a pretty crappy time, which they might not want to be reminded of every time they log on.

In pop culture terms, 2014 was pretty neat. It was the year of Guardians of the Galaxy, The Hobbit finale, Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar hosting triumph, Emma Watson’s UN speech, and the Veronica Mars movie.

But the past year also brought the end of The Stephen Colbert Report, several cyber hack scandals, and the death of great talents like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams.

In real life, however, we’ve all had our personal ups and downs. Some have done great things, while others have experienced extreme tragedies. In comes Facebook, ready to recap your “awesome” year with Year in Review.

Web design consultant Eric Meyer is making headlines for his evocative blog post, which recounts the tragic loss of his six-year-old daughter to brain cancer earlier this year.

He has understandably been avoiding social media reminders of this horrific loss, until one day, when Facebook’s auto-generated Year in Review app showed him a picture of his deceased child, surrounded by party clip-art.

This prompted Meyer to voice his frustrations with Facebook’s presumptuous attitude towards its users; the social network seems to assume that our years have all been full of drunk selfies, weddings and graduations.

“For those of us who lived through the death of loved ones, or spent extended time in the hospital, or were hit by divorce or losing a job or any one of a hundred crises, we might not want another look at this past year,” Meyer writes.

Meyer points out that the app is subjecting Facebook users to “inadvertent algorithmic cruelty,” and suggests some design fixes to avoid digging up painful memories.

Recognising that the app has caused Meyer pain, Year in Review product manager Jonathan Gheller has reached out to offer his apologies on behalf of Facebook.

As he tells The Washington Post, “[The app] was awesome for a lot of people, but clearly in this case we brought him grief rather than joy.”

Next year, Meyer’s concerns will allegedly be taken into consideration.