STUPID GENIUSES SWARMS FACEBOOK WITH STEREOTYPE POSTS! - Ibrahim Abdeali

With the recent visit of the Indian PM’s visit to the United States raised a lot of public questionnaires. The issue heated up when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Facebook & Google headquarters situated in the Silicon Valley at California.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO & founder of Facebook initiated an online application which enabled users worldwide to change their profile pictures with a transparent tricolour layer with insights from the logo of the Digital India campaign to show support to this government of India initiative.

Having a number of Indian users who changed their profile pictures, opinion makers from the media industry criticized Facebook’s such an initiative. A recent headline on an online Journal that reads “Your Facebook Tricolour Profile Picture Doesn’t Support Digital India; Here’s The Ugly Truth” was shared by many of the Indian users overnight after a number of profile pictures were being constantly changed. This sudden remorse aroused in the public about their attempts to change their profile pictures is a senseless false claim.

In a recent media declaration, Facebook’s spokesperson stated that “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 shorthand 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.”

Because of the false claims, a number of users restricted themselves from using this creative application over their profile pictures. Moreover, without having any idea about the concepts of the wide-spread Internet.Org’s controversy, Indian youths flooded their posts with their stupid ideas and views about it. Moreover, Internet.Org being an international agenda in the digital world is still a hot topic; however the most astonishing fact is that a majority of youths in India are still unaware of the Government’s Digital India Campaign. The ones who bet to have some idea of it are celebrating contentment with half knowledge. The ‘worth appraisal’ technological upbringing of India is the basic motto of the Digital India Campaign. It not only constrains to free internet access across the country but also relates widely to ‘technological advancements’ which many of us are not even bothered of. What we understand is to avail free WiFi across major public places in India is just a mere part of the initiative.

Facebook’s Internet.Org which is a controversial platform and seemingly a ‘philanthropic’ idea is basically deriving entrepreneurship through providing internet accessibility for free across backward regions of major developing countries including India. This mass project is being criticized generally for business and commercial disagreements between companies and countries and therefore it has been considered controversial.

Now the question that arises in the minds is that is the youth of this country still being stereotype? A considerable number of people create unnecessary hype over social platforms without reading and understanding the facts behind a particular issue. If this sort of a negligent audience is present, initiatives like the Digital India or even Internet.Org shall never be able to home itself in the country. Same goes with the rest of the initiatives of the government which is being overlooked by us just because we tend to believe what people say rather than self-analysing things before coming to any conclusion.

However, even if the rumour about the change in the profile pictures would directly make Indians sign petitions to accept Internet.Org would have been true; sensible ones must understand that in any Judiciary system, such online petitions are not valid.  Moreover, Facebook is not the sole owner of the idea and therefore it has no such authority to initiate such a movement secretly. Therefore even if it had been true, there was no harm in adding a transparent layer of the tricolour on the profile pictures because nevertheless, it would have shown to the world how united we stand at something good being done in the favour of the country in India.

But, since the Indian subcontinent dwells such brilliant fools in its care, who would use their common senses everywhere to unnecessarily prove their clever wit, but shall never go into the depths of such critical blames and would follow the crowd being a typical stereotype. The youth of this country boasts upon being 65% in the National Census of 2015, but poor they do not understand their 65% only has 15% of useful lot and rest are hindrance to the country’s development. Bitter but true!