mk per our discussion on the call
ButterflyEffect per your related post:
I would feel disgusted in myself giving everyone the option to overlay a French flag on their username. That kind of relationship is wrought with all sorts of contradictions. There is a difference between giving people the ability to do so, and creating a decision-making process for it. As I said on our call: What if you walked into Costco, and were given the option to carry a French flag while you shopped?
In some ways, I think it's a simpler question for Facebook. Will they lose page views if they'll don't offer the French flag overlay? Will users visit other sites to modify their profile picture? If the cost of implementing the French flag results in more clicks and more ad revenue at a high enough profit margin, they'll do it. The Lebenese flag is excluded for a similar reason. Outwardly Facebook needs to look like they care and don't play favorites, but the dollars talk, and users and the ad revenue they generate just didn't care as much about Beirut. Similarly with Costco, if it became trendy to walk around with a French flag as a cape, I'd be willing to bet Costco and every other retailer would have a display of flags for purchase at the entrance.
I think the difference is that Facebook is a media company where costco is a retail company. I also think it's odd when people chastise CNN or FOX for being agenda driven mainstream media companies, but don't turn the same skeptical eye to an absolutely gigantic, international media company like Facebook. Facebook is a media powerhouse and probably spreads more news and information than all of the other traditional media companies combined. If Fox were to start policy thumbing about the need to crack down on terrorism and the pushing of an international police state, people would see credibility in that, but saying the same thing about Facebook feels almost crackpot. I don't know, I'm still thinking through this idea, so I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say, but I do think that when a media company makes these kinds of massive decisions that shift public perception, we should look at why.