October 12, 2012

There were 2 posts published on October 12, 2012 (this is page 1 of 1).

Smoking gun unlikely in Romney Facebook hacking case


I fell asleep last night with the thought in my mind that there’s not likely to be any “smoking gun” evidence with regard to the Mitt Romney Facebook hacking mystery. I know it happened to me and I know that I can prove that I never clicked on Romney’s page. Beyond that, I can’t speak for anyone else.

All I can do is collect the many stories of people like me who have found themselves signed up for Romney’s page without knowing it. These anecdotes are the most compelling evidence so far and so far they show no signs of slowing.

Romney story gets Slashdotted


I was indirectly “Slashdotted” yesterday when Slashdot posted a link to the Mother Jones story about Mitt Romney Facebook hacking:

Why Do So Many Liberals “Like” Mitt Romney On Facebook?
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 11, @02:47PM
from the strange-bedfellows dept.

pigrabbitbear writes “Mother Jones reports that, ‘In recent weeks, a host of liberal types have complained that their Facebook accounts have erroneously “liked” Romney’s page, and some are floating the theory that the Romney campaign has deployed a virus or used other nefarious means to inflate the candidate’s online stature. This conspiratorial notion has spawned a Facebook community forum, and its own page: “Hacked By Mitt Romney” (cute url: facebook.com/MittYouDidntBuildThat)’ So what’s going on? Is the Romney campaign engaging in some tech wizardry to hijack Americans’ Facebook pages? Seems unlikely, but Romney did somehow manage to acquire millions of fake Twitter followers. But it looks like the Romney campaign isn’t behind this one — Facebook and its mobile app is.”

Actually, this was a Slashdot story that linked to another blog that linked to the Mother Jones story that linked to my site, so it’s not like MT.Net was Slashdotted. That’s why I didn’t notice a huge spike in traffic at my blog. The Hacked By Mitt Romney Facebook page url of http://www.facebook.com/MittYouDidntBuildThat did get mentioned prominently, though, which resulted in 57 new page likes or an overnight jump of 18%.

Of course, I can’t be completely sure these are real living, breathing persons after what I now know about Facebook likes, but that’s what Facebook tells me. Continue reading →