Image from Philippine Star’s page via Facebook - Facebook apologized over the issue on flag
- The flag it displayed has the red part at the top
- The blue part at the top of the flag symbolizes peace, while red indicates war
Facebook has apologized for its Independence Day greeting — which showed an erroneous photo of the Philippine flag; the red and blue parts were interchanged.
“This was unintentional, and we’re sorry,” said Facebook in a statement sent to Philippine Star. “We care deeply about the community in the Philippines and, in an attempt to connect people on Independence Day, we made a mistake.”
Facebook only wanted to be part of the Philippine Independence Day on Sunday, June 12, so it came up with a surprise for its Filipino users. With this, the Facebook’s home page greeted the Filipinos users with a photo which shows the Philippine flag.
It, however, displayed the flag with the red part at the top and the blue at the bottom. To note, the Philippines does not make use of a separate war flag; instead, the national flag itself is used for this purpose. To indicate a state of war, the red field is flown upwards and is placed on the right, on the observer’s left, if it is in a hanging position.
“Happy Independence Day! Here’s to all of the Philippines’ health, happiness and prosperity,” read the greeting which accompanied the photo.
However, Facebook users noticed that something was wrong with the photo and rather than earning more goodwill, the greeting spurred controversy.
“Today marks the Philippines’ Independence day. One thing that differentiates our country’s flag from the others is that once it’s flown inverted (with the red on top of the blue), it means the country is in a state of war. Dear Facebook, kindly rectify this error before risking a nation of a hundred million to rise in uproar (and some trolling), as well as sending the wrong message to our neighbors,” wrote Facebook user M.N.
“War? Really? For Chrissakes, we can’t even protect our shores from Chinese people. Just tag, Mark Zuckerberg, that the flag displayed here is inverted. Mark, may correct it himself. Who knows?” said J.E.
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