Facebook celebrates St Andrew's Day with Romanian flag upsetting Scottish users

Technically, Facebook was not wrong. Romania, together with Greece, Russia, Ukraine and Poland celebrated St Andrew's Day on 30 November. The social media platform however left its users in Scotland a little miffed when it failed to offer the blue-and-white Saltire option when they wanted to mark the day on Facebook.

The hashtag #StAndrewsDay had been trending in the UK as social media users sent each other wishes on St Andrew's Day. On Twitter alone, more than 16,000 people used the hashtag on Monday.

Facebook offers a feature that allows its users to indicate what they are doing and this includes celebrating holidays. Users had expected to see the Saltire or even something Scottish to pop up when they clicked on this option but instead, the Romanian flag appeared. Following complaints on social media, Facebook rectified the error, placing the blue and white flag as an option for its customers in Scotland.

The mistake could have come about because St Andrew's Day is celebrated in several other countries in the world. Although why the Romanian flag was picked, is not known.

The Independent believes that it could be that Romania popped up as the first country in alphabetical order among countries celebrating St Andrew's Day and hence was selected. Scottish newspapers which ran the story noted how Google used the correct flag in its search engine landing page on 30 November.

The UK Foreign Office in its tweet said: "See how our UK missions around the world flew the saltire flag to celebrate Scotland and #StAndrewsDay". It said both the Foreign Office and its overseas network of 267 posts celebrate Scotland and St Andrew's Day.

Even Number10 took to the hashtag to post a video of the Saltire "flying proudly alongside the Union Flag outside Downing Street for #StAndrewsDay.