Politics

Politics

There are 1,050 posts filed in Politics (this is page 52 of 105).

‘Hacked by Mitt Romney’ Facebook page


Thinking that Facebook just might be a good place to find other Facebook users who’ve been profile slammed (i.e. hacked) by Mitt Romney’s campaign, I created a Facebook page called (wait for it) … Hacked By Mitt Romney! We’ll see if it gains any attention.

I went through a ridiculous number of naming attempts before Facebook would let me choose the one I chose. Also, the “Facebook name” (the custom URL of http://www.facebook.com/MittYouDidntBuildThat) was also nearly impossible to choose. A number of obvious choices were already taken. Nothing with Romney in the name would be accepted. I’ve got screenshots of this and will share these when I get more time today.

Does Romney Buy his Facebook Fans?

Two weeks ago, ZoomSphere, a company that analyizes Facebook statistics, identified many fake accounts being added to Romney’s Facebook page. I agree that this data looks very, very suspect.

Today you could see that Mitt Romney crossed the border of 4.000.000 fans on his fan page on Facebook. This is a great milestone for each politician.

Here we can see that around 34% fans of Mitt Romney have only couple of their own fans. It is very unusual and suspicious.

Similarly, a large proportion of such fans is usually an indicator of their shopping over the dubious services.

Check out ZoomSphere.com’s day-to-day tracking of Mitt Romney’s page here.

via ZoomSphere.com • Does Romney Buy his Facebook Fans?.

Other Facebook users report Romney profile slamming


Other Facebook users have been reporting that their Facebook accounts were signed up for Mitt Romney’s Facebook page without their permission. Here are a few quotes from the Facebook help page topic:

“This happened to me, as well.”

“Happened to me too i wouldnt piss on that Douchenozzels shoes if his feet were on fire”

“That keeps happening to me, not only with the Mitt Romney page, but with several other pages–mostly commercial things like Amazon and Target, whose pages I never even visited.”

Here are a few from another Facebook help page on the topic:

“Betcha this year’s tax return’s will show Mitt Romney’s the biggest shareholder in Facebook. My page is flooded with his face”.

“My facebook is also flooded wiyh Mitt Romney posts, how can we rid of them.”

I’ve heard from friends of friends who have had this happen to them. I’ll see if I can get quotes from them, too.

Also, I’m starting to see this topic show up on message boards around the Internet. Word is slowly starting to get around.

Update 12:10 PM: Here’s another response on the Centrist Word blog:

“I had this happen to me, and as an outspoken Obama supporter, I was horrified. A friend spotted it on Facebook and texted a screen shot to me. A whole new low in political campaigning.”

Chart reveals unusual patterns in Romney’s Facebook popularity


I discovered a company called Inside Facebook which has been tracking the popularity of the Presidential candidates’ Facebook pages.

Take a look at the graph above. Obama’s growth has been extremely predictable and steady, while Romney’s has been all over the place. It shows extreme swings. Now, I don’t know if waves of actual Romney supporters are getting on board his train or if someone’s padding his numbers on his behalf but the stark difference in the two candidates’ patterns does raise questions.

Profile slamming

I was thinking that there isn’t much out there that describes what I believe Mitt Romney’s campaign (or one of its allies) is doing to surreptitiously set Facebook accounts to like the campaign’s page. Is it account hijacking? Hacking? Vandalism? What do you call it?

Then I recalled telephone slamming, the practice where unscrupulous telephone companies steals the customer of another telephone company by switching that customer’s long distance provider without their knowledge or consent. This happened to a company I once worked for and stunned me in its audacity.

I think that manipulating someone’s social media profile without their permission is similar in some ways to telephone slamming. Since no one else seems to have come up with a name for this practice, I will call it “profile slamming.”

Barracuda Labs looks at Romney’s Twitter numbers

From Barracuda Labs


Barracuda Labs, the highly-respected spam-filtering company, wrote up a superb analysis of Mitt Romney’s Twitter numbers. You should read the whole thing, but here are some highlights:

Most interestingly, during our investigation, Republican nominee for US President Mitt Romney has been scrutinized recently for his abnormal increase in new followers (@mittromney), indicating that these followers had been purchased in the same way as the Dealers/Abuser scenario from our study. We do note that these followers could have been purchased by either himself, his associates or by his opponents. Particularly, on July 21st, 2012, his follower number went from 673,002 to 789,924, representing a gain of 116,922 or 17%.

In one day – boom! – his follower numbers grow an astounding 17 percent!
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More stories of Romney fudging social media

FastCompany recently warned against the temptation of buying fake Twitter followers, pointing to a service called StatusPeople which can ferret out fakes. Says the article:

Do a quick Google search for “Mitt Romney Twitter Followers” and you’ll find dozens of articles discussing how his follower numbers grew suspiciously. Security firm Barracuda Labs created an infographic based on its research breaking down Romney’s newfound Twitter fame, sharing that one in four of Romney’s new Twitter accounts had never sent a single tweet. No matter how the presidential candidate got these new followers, it doesn’t look good from the outside (although his Faker Score is currently sitting pretty at just 12% of 839,719 followers).

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Did Mitt Romney hack my Facebook account?

Romney Facebook likes (courtesy Centrist Word)

After a 20-year IT career spent keeping the digital bad guys out of the corporate networks I managed, I’ve developed a sharp sense of when something digital isn’t right. Readers of my blog have seen me put this ability to use against phone scam artists, hapless former Nigerian kings, phishers, and other digital vermin.

When I spot something unusual, I am driven to find out as much about it as I can. I enjoy the challenge of uncovering online crooks, exercising my online sleuthing skills to get answers. Something big and unusual caught my attention last week; something no one else seems yet to be talking about.

I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t care if I’m the only one to see that the emperor has no clothes. If I am truly convinced that everyone else is missing the truth, I must, must be bold enough to say so. I can’t ignore it. It’s just part of my personality.

With that in mind, let me state this clearly and concisely: Mitt Romney is manipulating his social media numbers. How do I know this? Because Romney’s campaign picked the wrong guy to manipulate.
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Centrist Word: Mitt Romney Campaign Busted Buying Hundreds of Thousands of Facebook LIKES and Twitter Followers

Romney Facebook likes (courtesy Centrist Word)


The Centrist Word blog has uncovered evidence of social media manipulation by the Mitt Romney campaign.

While the blog accuses the campaign of buying Facebook followers, the article doesn’t provide answers about how this manipulation is being done. It’s quite possible that Romney’s campaign or someone acting on its behalf has been exploiting a Facebook vulnerability to secretly register likes on the accounts of not just fake users but real users as well.

The same thing happened at the same time. As you can see in the chart above, Mitt had seen a steady rise in the number of Facebook likes, then, magically on August 1st a spike. At the same time, Romney set the lofty goal of reaching 3 million Facebook likes. Propaganda for the digital age – purchased popularity.

Again, all you need to do is google “buy facebook followers” and you will see dozens of companies ready to help. In most cases, these services are used by companies in order to give them an initial ‘boost’ when first setting up a Facebook fan page for their business.

via Mitt Romney Campaign Busted Buying Hundreds of Thousands of Facebook LIKES and Twitter Followers |.

More Mitt Romney Facebook hijacks

A few other Facebook users are reporting that their accounts were used to like Mitt Romney’s page without their permission.

One person replied to my post to the Facebook help forum with this comment:

“The same thing happened to me and a few other people I know.”

Then there is this comment:
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