A look at the source code and well, the profile pic is NOT for the support of Digital India, but for Facebook's Internet.org initiative. In a response to DoT, Facebook just announced that 17 million people have supported the Internet.org service.

Mark Zuckerberg has changed his profile pic – and I won’t.

I got a bit of flak from several Indians who consider it a moment of pride that an American has changed his profile pic to Indian tricolor as support for India’s digitalIndia initiative.

But No.

The hidden agenda is ‘Internet.org’ – the free Internet that will kill Internet freedom and will hurt the startup ecosystem as well.

What Really Happens When You Change Your Profile Pic?

A look at the source code and well, the profile pic is NOT for the support of Digital India, but for Facebook’s Internet.org initiative.

What’s The Big Deal?

In a response to DoT, Facebook just announced that 17 million people have supported the Internet.org service. The company has published all comments received (dropbox link/via) – which was (I believe) mostly collected from its CAN’T-SAY-NO-POLLS.

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 !

So Mr. Narendra Modi, will you please undo the changes damage?

Update : Facebook has clarified the issue.

“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 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.”

Can You Still Trust Facebook?

No. Not when it comes to Internet.org promotion. For a company that has ran sleazy polls like these, there can’t be any trust.

[Thanks Nikhil Vishnu for the tip.]