More than 26 million Facebook users worldwide rainbow-fied their profile pictures this weekend in celebration of Pride and to show their overwhelming support of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage.
Over the past few days, the free rainbow filter tool Facebook provided has garnered more than half a billion likes and comments around the world. According to a statement from the company, two interns created the rainbow filter code in a recent internal hackathon hosted by Facebook. It became so popular among the employees that the company decided that the tool be tweaked and streamlined for public use in time for the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of same-sex couples. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg and his team greeted "Happy Pride!" to any user who chose to celebrate and support marriage equality in public by applying the rainbow filter to their profile images.
Facebook has been a vocal supporter of LGBT rights for a long time now, though many activists are still disappointed about the company's real-names policy that required everybody to use an authentic name that can be verified with legal documents. Abuse survivors, sex workers, drag queens and Native Americans all agreed that it was a discriminatory policy, one which Facebook has reversed. In the U.S., more than 6 million people have identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender or gender non-conforming on the social network.
Changing the profile picture of those who are not characteristically political has been a common way to show support passively. Rainbow-fying their profile pictures, a number of famous celebrities also expressed their support for the cause this weekend, including Andy Cohen, E.L. James, Leonardo DiCaprio, Elizabeth Banks and Anne Hathaway. Public figures such as Elizabeth Warren and Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff also used the rainbow filter on their profile pictures.
Fresh from his recent movie "Terminator Genisys," Arnold Schwarzenegger's rainbow-fied profile picture seemed to have upset a fan, posting "What's wrong with U [sic] Arnie? I have to unlike," but Schwarzenegger simply terminated the comment by writing, "Hasta la vista."
Check out the rainbow-fied profile pics of some famous celebrities below.
