Facebook Pulls Kill Obama Poll
Facebook has recently pulled a poll from their site that asked if US President Obama should be killed or not. The poll, entitled “Should Obama be killed?”, offering answers like “Yes, if he cuts my health care.”, was taken down on Monday.
After learning of the poll the US Secret Service is investigating who launched it. Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said that once they found out, they worked with Facebook to have it taken down. They are definitely investigating the issue as they would any other threatening case. However, there haven’t been any details of their investigation revealed.
There are over 750 Facebook users who cast their vote on the poll by the time it was taken down. Once the poll became popular on the site, one user posted that it was sick, sad, and pure racism.
According to Barry Schnitt, the spokesman for Facebook, the poll was created over the weekend. It is common for users to create their own polls and talk to their friends using the social networking site, he continued. This particularly offensive poll was created by a single user, the spokesman added.
The site had to actually shut down the program just to take the poll off, as it is controlled by an outside developer. The application will continue to be disabled until it is confirmed by the developer that the poll has been taken down.
Schnitt also noted that there are procedures and policies for situations like this in the future. Facebook is offended by the poll, he continued, and it is unfortunate that the world’s controversial ideas are brought to their site. The spokesman added that they feel they dealt with it responsibly by removing it as soon as they knew about it.