in Follow-Up, Meddling, Politics

Romney hacking victim speaks out


I got this nicely-worded message last night from a victim of Romney’s Facebook hacking who found my blog:

Thanks so much for putting this page together. I just found out that somehow my account had “liked” Mitt Romney and was appalled, so I did some online searching and found your blog, which mentioned this page. If you are still looking for people to be interviewed, I would be happy to join your efforts.

I know that I did not accidentally “like” Romney – not only am I a firm supporter of Obama, but I very rarely use the “like” feature at all. When I use it, it’s always for someone I know firsthand, to support something they are personally doing. I wouldn’t “like” something by accident, because my volume of liking is pretty low. In fact, I hadn’t been on facebook in days at the time my account registered the like (which I have since “unliked” of course).

This is far more sinister that buying fake “likes” – this is using a real person’s account to make statements in that person’s name. I’m not saying Romney is doing this on purpose, but perhaps he has hired some particularly stupid and shady social media consultants. Or perhaps Facebook itself is to blame?

I hope you get to the bottom of this!

This person goes on to say that she doesn’t own a mobile device, so it would be impossible to have accidentally liked Mitt Romney’s page by that means:

I do not even have a smart phone, and I’ve only logged into facebook a couple of times on an ipad, the only mobile device I do occasionally use – but that was weeks ago. Oh, and one more note: I also had a mysterious “like” to Dr. Oz’s diet – so really, while Mitt is not blameless for hiring unscruplous people, I suspect the unscrupulousness may not be within his campaign itself, but rather with the people he hires or with Facebook needing to monetize its value. Surely any presidential candidate couldn’t be so stupid as to intentionally hack facebook?

The more messages I see like this one, the more I’m convinced there is really something going on here.