Facebook is seeing another political movement rally backers on the social net by having supporters change their profile pictures. If you’ve been seeing profile pictures replaced with a distinctive red image, it’s the work of Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the gay and lesbian advocacy group and opponent of the Defense of Marriage Act.
HRC isn’t the first to take advantage of Facebook this way. Last year when the internet rallied against the controversial, corporation-backed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), activists on Facebook turned their profile pictures black to signify how the laws would amount to a clampdown on information flow over the internet. More recently, Rhythm and Hues inspired a unionization movement among visual effects artists when it announced layoffs right around the time it was taking home an Oscar for its work on the film Life of Pi. The movement took to Facebook, asking supporters to replace their profile pictures with ‘green screens’ to symbolize what a film might look like without the work of visual effects artists.
HRC’s image was originally shared by the group earlier this week and as of the time of this writing has generated more than 68,000 shares and 21,000 Likes. It has also transcended Facebook to other social nets, namely Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest. HRC introduced the image when it put it in place of its own blue and yellow logo. Advocates have not only begun using it for their profile pictures but also putting creative spins on their own images. Images circulating the internet are incorporating the graphic’s distinctive red, representing HRC’s message red4equality, and the widely recognized gay and lesbian movement’s ‘equal sign’ logo into everything from Beatles inspired images to Star Wars themes and pictures of kittens.
