A friend and I just spent four days in Uganda, and I got an email today letting me know that she had put her photos from the trip up on Facebook.
She geotagged the album as taking place in Uganda, and when I clicked on the “Uganda” link, mistaking it for the album title…
…I was redirected here:
Once again, for those of you who missed it:
I clicked on:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Uganda/106029926094101
and was redirected to:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joseph-Kony/112208505457015?rf=106029926094101
Dear Facebook: WHAT THE FUCK.
(Also: 70,000 people “like” Kony on Facebook. WHAT DOES IT MEAN.)
UPDATE: As of Wednesday morning EST, this appears to be fixed. The country page for the United Kingdom, however, redirects to a page for the Britanica Summer Academy.
This is both the funniest, and saddest thing I’ve seen all week.
Facebook has scraped Wikipedia, and in this case clearly caught it at a bad time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uganda&diff=493081015&oldid=493052281
(It was corrected and rebuked 20 minutes later on Wikipedia.)
On a related note, did you know that two organizations are fighting over the new TLD of .Africa? And that the African Union was snubbed in its attempt at ownership? Also, an American company is angling for .Zulu – makes you wonder who should have the right/responsibility for such culturally iconic names.
To that point, we’ll be debating .Africa ownership and if it will have any development impact on the continent at the next Technology Salon: http://technologysalon.org/meetings/ RSVP if you can make it.
It means there are at least 70,000 trolls on Facebook.
Even worse is if you click on the redirect link you get a message asking if you were sent to the wrong place. If you check the box yes and click you are then send to the real Uganda/Wiki page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Uganda/106029926094101?nr=112208505457015