Facebook clarifies: “Your support for Digital India NOT for Internet.org”
On Sunday, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg revealed a new feature in which your profile picture got a filter of a tricolour so that you could join him in supporting Digital India. Many started changing their profile pictures with the tricolour, some in support of Digital India and some others because they found it really cool.
But, the problem is that, when you change your profile picture, the profile pic is NOT for the support of Digital India, but for Facebook’s Internet.org (or Free Basics, after some rushed rebranding) initiative.
the source code as revealed by some techies claims that the profile picture is not in support of Digital India, but for Facebook’s Internet.org(Free Basics).
This is the official statement that was released by Facebook yesterday:
Facebook on Tuesday sought to clarify on the controversy over support for “Digital India”, The company said it was a “mistake” by an engineer.
It all started when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg changed his profile picture with a tint of green, saffron and white for the Tricolour in a symbolic gesture to suggest he supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Digital India” campaign.
“There is absolutely no connection between updating your profile picture for digital India and Internet.org. An engineer mistakenly used the words “Internet.org profile picture” as a name he chose for part of the code. But this product in no way connects to or registers support for Internet.org. We are changing the code today to eliminate any confusion.”
Internet.org(Free Basics)
Internet.org is a partnership between social networking services company Facebook and six companies (Samsung, Ericsson,MediaTek, Opera Software, Nokia and Qualcomm) that plans to bring affordable access to selected Internet services to less developed countries by increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access.