Rainbow Facebook photos: Armchair activism or shifting tide?
More than 26 million Facebook profile photos have taken on a rainbow hue in the days since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that marriage is a right guaranteed under the Constitution regardless of a person's sexual orientation.
People have been covering their profile photos with the Facebook-supplied overlay that uses the best-known symbol of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights movement: the rainbow.
Leslie Gabel-Brett, director of education and public affairs at Lambda Legal, a national nonprofit that focuses on legal issues affecting the LGBT community, said the overlay is "fun" and "effective."
Facebook said the fact that the filter popped up on the same day as the Supreme Court decision was not planned any more than the Supreme Court planned to issue its ruling the Friday before gay pride parades in San Francisco, New York and elsewhere.
The filter was popular among employees, so Facebook rolled it out to regular users.
[...] others also have turned to rainbow as well.