Facebook uses a plane emoji to remember 9/11; what's needed is common sense

11 September is particularly close to the heart of every US citizen. In fact, it had a great impact on the course of global economy and international relations. Like the memory of every disaster, there's a fine line between forgetting victims and appearing to ride on their pain.That's what seems to have happened in the US. Typical of social media networks, users could update status messages to express solidarity with victims of the incident that occurred in 2001. Now consider this. When you log in to Facebook, it asks you the standard question on the text field to update your status. What's on your mind. If you're someone who's remembering what happened on 11 September, 2001, and all those who have survived, or have suffered loss, how would you express it on Facebook?[caption id="attachment_320999" align="aligncenter" width="640"]

A candle with a French flag to pay tribute to the victims of Paris attacks. Image: Reuters[/caption]The most popular way of showing solidarity is a candle. Its history and origins may have grayed out in popular memory. But the act of lighting a candle still resonates well by spreading light in a dark hour. It re-instills a sense of life and celebrating it when there's despair around. During times of war and natural disasters, candlelight vigils have turned out to be a universal language.And when you're remembering an event having as great an impact as 9/11, the last thing you'd use to express your emotions would be an airplane. That's just counter-productive. According to a report by Gizmodo, Facebook used a plane emoji to mark the events of September 11, 2001. However, it later changed the plane emoji to a candle. So, is the algorithm choosing the icons representing stories too?After human curators trending stories (accused to be bias) on Facebook, the social networking company decided algorithms were in a better position to decide how stories were identified. Naturally, when goof-ups like this happen, one tends to wonder. Where exactly does the future of technology lie? With AI? Would programs decide how we celebrate or mark events in the future? Is there any room for human emotions and recognising that there are things that may not be understood by algorithms?