Facebook, the largest social networking site with over 1 billion users across the world, has banned an advertisement from CREDO mobile, a 28 year old non-profit organisation with a vision for social change, from running in its pages. To get into the detail, the ad featured a picture of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the Facebook, Inc., with a plain criticism of FWD.us, Facebook’s latest political lobbying group.
According to the reports of Washington Post, in a statement officials from Facebook said that it is nothing more than a policy of the company. The company generally rejects any ad with the picture of the CEO, Zuckerberg, as it can be highly misleading for the users. An advertisement with the face of Zuckerberg, popping up in the Facebook account will surely give the impression that there is a message from Facebook, or Mark has something to say, which can be very ambiguous. But the reality behind this step by Facebook might have a base into a much deeper issue that does not address just the face of the CEO.
It can be easily related with the new and obviously uncharacteristic political turn the networking giant has taken recently. Facebook has started funding this organization FWD.us, which claims to be an entity promoting knowledge economy, immigration and education reform. The organization is also a key supporter of the Keystone XL gas pipeline.
Facebook is a believer that the H-1B immigration visa law needs to be changed in order to facilitate smooth immigration of the foreign techies and knowledge sharing. FWD.us happens to support and promote the same motto. Now in order to make the decision in their favour, FWD is supporting the politicians, who at the same time need support for the gas line issue. The picture of politics in the US might not be as clear as it is shown to the common people.
Declining to run the ad criticizing the step of the company in politics seems to be a consequence of the political opinions of Facebook. In this context, It is not only Mark Zuckerberg who is supporting the FWD.us, but this organisation is supported by a long list of high profilers of the Silicon Valley including Marissa Mayer of Yahoo and Bill Gates.