Late Friday evening, Puerto Rico made it onto Facebook’s trending topics, an event that should help spread awareness of the crisis the territory faces, and how the inaction of Congress is affecting the situation. However, in a rather ironic twist, Facebook’s editors chose a picture of the flag of Cuba as the thumbnail image for the topic:
Screenshot taken on Friday evening.
The little snafu on Facebook’s part is a perfect example of how unknown Puerto Rico is to everyday Americans, perfectly establishing the reason for the lack of action in Washington, DC.
Constituents do not care about what they don’t know, hence members of Congress do not feel pressured to act on an issue with only downsides that their district members are in the dark about.
Now in Facebook’s defense, the two flags are identical in design with inverted colors. That said, a Google search could have shown them the correct flag. By Saturday morning Puerto Rico was gone from the trending list, so the error might have not been seen by many. However, given the situation, it would have been better that it be seen, even with the wrong flag.
