Just when things were looking rosy for Facebook - 300 million users, turning a profit, big buzz - this happens.
LA Times: Secret Service Investigating Obama Poll on Facebook (Sept. 29, 2009)
Some as-yet-to-be-determined wingnuts use a third-party Facebook application creation tool to put up a poll asking whether the president should be killed. According to the story, the poll went up Sept. 26 (a Saturday), was reported by outraged Facebookians on Monday. Facebook took it down, and the Secret Service is looking into who created it.
I heard about it from my husband, who heard about it on YahooNews, prompting me to look to my No. 1 news source, the LA Times. (I subscribe! I get it on paper too! Buy the LA Times! Think of it as a donation to truth, justice, and liberty for all...).
I was horrified. So I posted the link on my Facebook news feed. Like I told my friends, I think the creator(s) of that poll need to be found and outed. I want photos. And I want to know the names of everyone who voted "yes" or "maybe." I think they should all be on a Secret Service watch list and surveilled for the next 8 years.
"You let them off too easy," one friend in Montana opined.
Maybe. I still want more details. Free speech can be ugly speech, and this country badly needs more people who'd actually follow through on the statement "I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it."
Even if it's disgusting and horrifying.
But what does that poll mean for organizations using Facebook as a platform? Is Facebook tarnished -- and will any of the associations using Facebook be tarnished?
So far, so not. But it looks like a good example of why not to put all your social networking eggs in the Facebook basket. Diversify. What goes up must come down - sometime.
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