Friday’s Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage was a historic moment for civil rights in America, and for the first time ever, Facebook released a tool that encouraged people express solidarity with a rainbow profile picture. Naturally, Facebook is also keeping track of who’s using it. [Update: Facebook didn’t deny it.]
The Atlantic recently asked if all those rainbow profile photos were “another experiment.” A Facebook spokesperson responded to that question directly: “it’s not an experiment or test—everyone sees the same thing.” Facebook has conducted studies on profile pic memes like this in the past, but this is the first time that Facebook has built a tool for the expressed purpose of showing political support with a profile picture. That said, the Facebook spokesperson didn’t deny that the social network was tracking which users support gay marriage and adding that to the database of personal information the company has on its billion users.
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| Samantha Lily Birner, aka Sam Birner - "Nobody knew." |
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| Zak Stowe - "Nobody knew." |