Who Gets to Use Facebook’s Rainbow Pride Reaction?

In June 2017, Facebook announced that the feature would be available in “major markets with Pride celebrations” and for people who follow the company’s LGBTQ page. They also announced that the rainbow would “not be available everywhere.” I led a team with Aimee Rickman and Megan Steiner to discover the parts of the country where Facebook made the feature available and where they limited it.

We recruited hundreds of people in 30 cities across the US to report if they could access the Pride reaction and published the result in the Atlantic. We found systematic patterns in the geography and identity of who received the feature. You can read more here: Who Gets to Use Facebook’s Rainbow ‘Pride’ Reaction?.