I'm not very active on Facebook but I was surprised when, a week ago, I got a notice, purportedly from two of my Facebook "friends", that was a campaign pitch for the Tories. The message said they were backing prime minister Harper and hoped I would too.
It turns out that neither one of these guys is supporting the Tories nor had they any idea of how their names (including profile pix) got onto the message I received.
Is this a new form of voter manipulation? Are the Tories hacking into Facebook accounts for info to send campaign messages? Anybody else had this experience?
5 comments:
I was <a href="http://thinkingaboot.blogspot.ca/2015/06/whats-wrong-with-facebook-and-why-does.html:>thinkingaboot that.</a>
I was thinkingaboot that.
A little digging and I think I've found out what happened. One of my Facebook "friends", John, has friended all three mainstream party leaders. He doesn't support the Tories but he wanted to receive updates from Steve, Justin and Tommy.
It sounds as though the Cons must have gone through his "friends" list, grabbed his profile picture, and used the data to send out political endorsements in the names of people who have no knowledge of it and never consented to it.
Jeez I wish I hadn't deleted the fake endorsement. It's probably not quite illegal but it is oh so manipulative.
I refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with Facebook. Zuckerberg is not my friend but he's not my biggest worry. Among my friends and relatives are some who have no sense of security or even privacy, who will happily hit the forward to all button.
wow...sickening!
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