Indian social media erupted on Monday after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his display picture to include a tricolour tint. He did so in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India campaign.
In an enthusiastic response to Zuckerberg’s new display picture, many Indian Facebook users began using the tricolour tint on their profile pictures. However, someone noticed that when you change your display picture, the html code underneath contains the word Internet.org. All hell broke loose.
A post on Reddit claimed that the display picture change meant automatically pledging your support for Internet.org. Internet.org is a controversial Facebook initiative to provide basic Internet services free of cost to those who cannot afford a full version of the Internet.
However, changing your profile picture does not mean automatically pledging your support for Facebook’s initiative. Facebook confirmed that there is absolutely no correlation between updating one’s profile picture and Internet.org. ‘Internet.org’ is merely an image descriptor and did not connect to anything.
Changing your profile picture in support of Modi’s initiative does not count as a yes vote for Internet.org.
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