Some wild stuff goes down in the Philippines. The president, who has been dubbed "The Trump of the East" by John Oliver, recently encouraged ordinary citizens to lend a hand by shooting and killing drug dealers. Boxers become senators. People watch porn for really impressive amounts of time.
The country isn't at war, though, so it has that going for it, which is nice. That's why people were understandably upset when Facebook accidentally declared a state of war in the nation. As The Philippine Star reported, the social media site attempted to honor Philippine Independence Day during the weekend by posting the flag graphic seen above. There was only one small problem. The Philippine flag is supposed to have a blue bar above a red bar (or, if the flag is hanging, the red field should be on the left). When those colors are inverted, like Facebook's flag was, it means the country is in a state of war.
The flag was posted with a button that allowed users to post a celebratory message for the holiday, but many people on social media were pointing out the gaffe.
Facebook reportedly reached out to the Star to apologize for the "mistake."
It's not the first time that people have been confused about how to display the Philippines' unique flag. The U.S. embassy was forced to apologize in 2010 after it displayed the flag upside down during a meeting between President Obama and then-president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III.
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