After Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed their profile photos on Facebook supporting Digital India, a number of Facebook users have changed theirs as well. The picture uses an Indian Tricolor filter, much like the rainbow filter used during Facebook’s “Celebrate Pride” campaign.
They were were greeted by a message thanking them for “helping transform India into a digitally empowered society”.
But there were soon claims that uploading the distinctive picture could come to be interpreted as support for Facebook’s internet.org project in addition to Modi’s Digital India.
This allegation arose when some internet users looked at the source code of Facebook’s tool, which revealed that it was logging the entries of people changing their profile picture with tags related to Facebook’s contentious internet.org.
On uploading this picture and checking the source code of the page will reveal that the picture does not support Digital India, but instead it covertly supports Facebook’s Internet.org initiative.
“While you might be updating your profile pic to (look cool) show your support towards Digital India, Facebook is counting it as a support for Internet.org,” the website nextbigwhat.com explained.
It actually is a blow to our Internet freedom and Net Neutrality, the one we are fighting for long.
In a response to DoT, Facebook has announced that 17 million people have supported the Internet.org service. The company published all the comments it received. However, most of these comments were sourced from the poll that the company ran where users were supposed to answer to the question – “Do you want India to have free basic internet services?”, with just two option; Not Now and Yes, I’m In. There was no option of answering “No”. This means that Facebook wants users to like Internet.org either now, or later; not liking it was not an option.
Internet.org is an open platform offered by Facebook across 19 developing countries, including India. It aims to enable easy access of selected apps and app-based services to people at zero cost. In India, it has partnered with Reliance Communications to offer free access to about 30 websites.