Blogger Helps Secret Service Pull Obama Death Poll from FB
The Secret Service got an assist from a Southern California blogger at 'The Political Carnival' on Sunday when she tipped them off to a poll on Facebook asking whether President Obama should be killed.
GottaLaff broke the story online Sunday when she discovered the 'Obama Death Poll' on Facebook and posted about it on her political blog, along with a screen grab of the poll from Facebook. She then reported it to the Secret Service.
An updated entry to her blog today reports that the Secret Service called her back to thank her.
Nearly 400 people had responded to the poll Sunday night, and by noon Monday, a reported 90% of respondents had voted "no," from the multiple choices, "yes," "maybe," "if he cuts my healthcare," or "no."
The poll has since been pulled from Facebook, and the Secret Service is investigating. Barry Schmitt, Director of Policy Communications for Facebook, confirmed that the application had been disabled and that Facebook was "following up [with] the developer to ensure the offending content has been removed and that they have better procedures in place going forward to monitor their user-generated content.”
A spokesman for the Secret Service confirmed they were aware of the poll and were taking appropriate measures.
According to GottaLaff (@GottaLaff on Twitter), the woman who called her from the Secret Service thanked her "over and over, saying that there would be no way for the Secret Service to catch something like this without assistance. The Internets are too vast for that."
GottaLaff has since been contacted by the developer of the application on Facebook which hosted the poll, indicating he has no connection with Facebook and asking those who find egregious polls, as he agrees this one was, to contact him directly to have them removed.
Screen grab of the "Should Obama be Killed?" poll on Facebook, which has subsequently been pulled. (Thanks to @GottaLaff of The Political Carnival)
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Comments
The thing that scares the shit out of me is that 40 people were STUPID ENOUGH to say the President should be killed. Out loud. Online. In public.
Somehow I'm thinking if this were the Bush era, those 40 people would be arrested and held for a few days' worth of questioning...
Thankks.
Way to go gottalaff.
Again, hats off to GottaLaff for a job well done.
but congrats to GottaLaff for turning this one in. there is nothing even remotely redeeming about it.
And, just for the record, I'm sure everyone here would agree that this kind of thing is inappropriate no matter who is President. (Somehow, though, I don't think anything like this ever happened during the last administration.)
How things change from one presidency to another; what do you want to bet that a lot of those same people who thought Obama deserved death were indignantly saying it was treason even to disagree with or criticize George W. Bush?
Lord, sometimes I despair for this country witih such monumental stupidity out there...
As I see it, if we opened the eyes to the potential for violence, or made someone think twice before posting/speaking in hostile outbursts, we did something right.
Thanks for all the comments, and thank you Kathy Riordan for being so on top of this!!
Laffy
Glad this got caught and brought to the attention of the CIA/ Secret Service - NSC - whoever needs to be, um, more on top of these things.
Facebook is huge and not well monitored, really, but has terms of service, etc.. So the idiots who participated can be easily found.
If "they're" not seeing/monitoring this on FB, what about the hundreds of thousands of sites set up to directly make threats, not only at the President but the population at large?
My biggest fear - they are listening to the chitter chatter of supposed "Al Qaeda" and missing the thousands of potential Timothy McVeighs out there.
Thanks, Kathy.
In the Bush era there would have been more than 40.
Yes, but one of their essential points is that they do not believe he is the President... :)
I realize the that sounds rather fascistic - I'm OK with that.
~
Don't forget a couple of things here. Obama used the Internet to get elected. You got to accept the good with the bad. Presidents of the US inspire love and hatred here and around the world. Get used to it.