Why Facebook's idea for flag overlay shows that our world is unequal

Facebook's recent feature for enhancing the display picture with some country's flag as the overlay has created a lot of waves in the news. When prime minister Narendra Modi visited San Francisco in September 2015, Facebook's CEO, Mark Zucherburg changed his Facebook's display picture to carry the Indian national flag in the overlay. A large number of my friends, on Facebook, followed suit and carried the Indian national flag colors in the overlay of their respective display pictures. This added to the euphoria of prime minister Modi's visit to the Bay Area and his meeting with the CEO's of big software giants in Silicon Valley. At that time one could see the interest of software firms in PM Modi's visit to Silicon Valley because of his pledge and initiative to digitally revolutionize the Indian economy. Combining the optimism in the Bay Area at that time with the flag overlay feature on Facebook was a big success.

Cut to the French bombings on 13th November 2015. The entire world mourns the death of French citizens in an evil act of terror. The nature of the terror attacks and the meticulous planning effort put to execute them gave a big shock and grief to the entire world. My wife and I watched the news over television and we were also taken aback with sorrow and shock. My friends on Facebook expressed their solidarity and support to the affected French citizens by using the Facebook's flag overlay feature to color their display pictures in France's national flag colors. But somehow, looking at the updated profile pictures with the French national flag colors of many friends on a sorry occasion made me feel agitated. It seemed like hordes of people on Facebook followed other people and expressed their sorrow for tragic events even though they do not have any personal connection with events. Their lives continue as is when they share their photos on some special occasion or report some unimportant event on Facebook. Do they really feel for the people of France for whom they are expressing their sorrow by changing their display picture to carry the French national flag colors if they continue with virtual lives in normal and unmournful manner?

The hippocracy of the people comes out in open even more when despite of killing of innocent citizens of Syria, due to air bombing of Syrian territory by France and Russia, none of my friends on Facebook changed their display pictures to carry the colors of Syrian flags in the overlay. Ins't killing of the innocent five year old boy in Syria by the bombing deserve our solidarity and support towards his parents? I am guessing not. It may just be the case of how the people in the world are treated unequally. Killing of hundreds of French citizens in terror attacks warrant for a greater crime than masecare of thousands of innocent Syrians due to retaliatory bombings. This inequality is unfortunately being experienced in our virtual world as well now. The downside of such behavior is that this propagates faster in virtual world and hence affects the thinking and behaviors of a larger section of people.

People use technology to improve their lives, to be closer to their friends and family and given us means to express our opinions and thoughts to a very large audience. However, as the wise people say, "with great power comes even greater responsibility". We should understand the power of online information propagation through social media and be aware that our actions on social media affects the thinking and behaviors of a large number of people. When we strive to create a better world, we should make some effort to protect our virtual world from the bad practices of our physical world.