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How To Remove Your Facebook French Flag

By Val Powell
Published on: 00:11 PST, Nov 23, 2015

In a gesture of support to the victims of the terrorist attacks at several locations in Paris on November 13, Facebook launched a French flag filter for its users. Netizens who wanted to show their support were encouraged to use the filter located at the top of their profile pictures.

However, more than a week after the Paris bombings and days after the alleged mastermind was killed, some Facebook users are now finding it difficult to remove the filter.

Using the filter was just a click away when it was made available a few hours after the terrorist attacks. The social media giant included options for users to select how long they wanted to use the filter, ranging from an hour to a week.

Unfortunately for people who did not use this timed option, they may not be able to take away the filter. Instead, they will have to go to their home page in order to change their profile image.

Users will then have to hover their cursors on their profile picture and click on “Update Profile Photo.” Here, the users will see their previous profile pictures, including the image they used prior to incorporating the French flag filter. Users need to simply select the photo they want to use for their profile and voilà, everything is back to normal.

Facebook’s French Flag filter received both praises and criticism from the social media website’s users. When the filter was released, Facebook included the caption, “Change your profile picture to support France and the people of Paris.”

While some people are happy that Facebook wants to show its support for the victims of the Paris attacks, there are also some who think that Facebook is just riding the trend. One of the reasons the French flag filter has become so controversial is that it only supports France, which is a predominantly white, first-world nation. Some internet users pointed out that hundreds, even thousands of people are experiencing similar or worse attacks in other parts of the world, yet not once did Facebook create a filter to show support for those countries.

Rhonda McEwen, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, shared her thoughts on the criticisms.

“Certainly the criticism that arose, it was quite a large response. The number of people that pointed out this discrepancy, that it was about a Eurocentric, or more broadly, a Western perspective on loss.”

Some of the nations that have suffered attacks from the terrorist group ISIS include Lebanon, where a double suicide bombing killed 43 people; Kenya, where 147 people died in April; and Turkey, where more than 100 people died in a bombing.

On the other hand, some people who did not support the Facebook French flag filter said that there should have been more options. One Facebook user made an interesting observation about the filter, pointing out that it could also end up being used to show support for war in the future. The user said that the sympathy for France could turn into support for French military operations against terrorist groups.

There are also people who said that while the Paris bombings and attacks were indeed tragic and scary, there was no need to post all about it on Facebook and that the filter just promotes the story.

However, another Facebook user believes that the social media giant is just using the French flag filter to ride the trend of the story. The use of the filter lets people believe that they’re doing something when, actually, they’re not doing anything to show that support.

This is not the first time Facebook used a filter to show support for a controversial issue. Back in June, Facebook introduced a rainbow filter to show support for marriage equality, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize same-sex marriage across 50 states.

[Image via Facebook]

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