More than 12 million users are part of one of the 76,000 LGBTQ Facebook groups
Facebook rolled out several features allowing its users to celebrate LGBTQ Pride Month in June, including features for Instagram and Messenger.
Vice president and executive sponsor of pride@facebook Alex Schultz listed all of the social network’s Pride Month features in a Newsroom post, writing:
As Pride celebrations begin around the world, Facebook is proud to support our diverse community, including those that have identified themselves on Facebook as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or gender nonconforming. In fact, this year, over 12 million people across the globe are part of one of the 76,000 Facebook groups in support of the LGBTQ community, and more than 1.5 million people plan to participate in one of the more than 7,500 Pride events on Facebook.
Here are the details on Pride Month features on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger:
Pride-themed profile picture frames (pictured above) on Facebook, with users potentially seeing messages atop their News Feeds prompting them to create those frames. In addition, users who react to those messages may see special animations, also at the top of their News Feeds.
Pride-themed masks and frames in Facebook Camera, which can be accessed by swiping to the left of News Feed and clicking on the magic wand.
As announced last week, Instagram introduced special Pride month stickers for Instagram Stories and a rainbow brush editing tool.
Messenger Camera will offer Pride-themed stickers, frames and effects.
Schultz concluded:
Last year, for the first time ever, we began publicly sharing self-reported data around our LGBTQ community at Facebook. In a recent, voluntary survey of our employees in the U.S. about sexual orientation and gender identity, to which 67 percent responded, 7 percent self-identified as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender or asexual. We are proud to support the LGBTQ community, and while more work still remains, we are eager to be active partners going forward.
During any normal month, there are five reactions on Facebook: Like, Heart, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry. But in honor of Pride month, Facebook’s rolling out a new one: a rainbow.
The social media network announced in a post on Friday, “We believe in building a platform that supports all communities. So we’re celebrating love and diversity this Pride by giving you a special reaction.”
June is traditionally when LGBTQ people across the world celebrate Pride. The rainbow flag takes on a poignant tone this year, though: Gilbert Baker, the activist who created the rainbow flag in 1978 at Harvey Milk’s request, died in March 2017. He described himself as “the gay Betsy Ross,” according to his New York Times obituary.
People were excited and planned to make the most of the time they had with the emoji.
According to Facebook, it’s available for all of Pride Month.
But not everyone on Facebook has been able to immediately access the rainbow reaction.
And people, especially LGBTQ people, were a bit confused.
Don’t stress. Here’s how to get start reacting with rainbows on Facebook asap: