‘Philippines, Province of China’: How to create a geo-tag on Facebook
May 27, 2020 · By Rappler.com for www.rappler.com
Screenshot from Facebook app
‘Philippines, Province of China’: How to create a geo-tag on Facebook
Over the weekend, reports about a controversial geo-tag or location marker on Facebook surfaced. It said: “Philippines, Province of China.” It earned the ire of Filipinos, expressing their disapproval online. Senator Risa Hontiveros railed at it, comparing it to past incidents such as Filipino fishermen being harassed by Chinese vessels and the Wow China show on state-run radio network Philippine Broadcasting Service.
Hontiveros urged Filipinos to not make light of it at the risk of normalizing it, and to report the geo-tag. In our own attempts, however, we encountered an error that prevented the report from going through.
Just like the sarcastic “Philippines, Province of China” protest banners in July 2018, no one has claimed responsibility for the geo-tag. Creating one though is fairly easy. Regardless of whomever created the geo-tag, this is how they likely did it:
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On the Facebook feed, tap “Check in.”
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Type any letter on the “Search for places” field. The option to add a new location doesn’t show up unless you start searching for a place.
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Scroll to the bottom, and tap “Add a new place.”
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To add the new place, you can either use your current location according to your smartphone’s GPS, or select a city. In our trial, the ability to add a new location only is only accessible through the mobile app.
On desktops or laptops, one option may be to create a page (i.e. a page for a restaurant) that contains location details, which will now also be included in Facebook’s map database.
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On the next page, you can put in any name for the location. Once published, the geo-tag becomes publicly accessible information, available on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram. You won’t be able to make edits to it after publication, according to the app, although there is a way to suggest edits when using Facebook’s check in feature.
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Before publishing the geo-tag, unchecking the “I’m currently here” box makes the geo-tag revert to a city location as opposed to the user’s specific, current location
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A Facebook page is created for the geo-tag as well
Geo-tags, just like Facebook posts, can be user-generated. They’re useful for businesses such as restaurants and shops, so people can easily find where they are. As the “province of China” geo-tag has shown, it’s also useful for those may have something to express about the state of Philippines-China affairs. – Rappler.com
