Thursday, January 14, 2010

Pro-Prorogation Facebook Page Throws In Towel

Once called I SUPPORT the Prorogation of Parliament and the Prime Minister of Canada



...it has now, in the face of overwhelming public apathy, been renamed I SUPPORT the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, in a desperate attempt to attract more suckers:

Also, FreeD's Connie Fournier suspects the whole effort is about as real as astroturf:

... a quick search of the members of the group shows that many of the members are not even real people. A lot of them have no friends, or they are just friends with one other person (usually another member of the group). They are simply shell characters that have nothing in their profiles but a bunch of groups they have joined.

I don't mean any disrespect to any of you who have joined this group because I know that some of my friends are, in fact, members.

But, the organizer of the group is obviously a fake identity being used by someone affiliated with the CPC, and they are doing such an amateurish job that they are probably hurting the cause more than they are helping it.

As an aside, I'm interested in this name change thing. I have always been under the impression that if somebody changed the name of a Facebook group that I joined, I would be informed by Facebook and given the choice of opting out. Else, I might join a group called "I love fuzzy bunnies" and wind up being the member of a group called "I love Stalin" or some such thing. I know a couple of my readers had joined this group: did any of you receive notification of the name change?

6 comments:

Mike said...

Whoa, when Connie is on to your astroturfing shenanigans, its really time to quit...

$20 says Stephen Taylor is behind it.

Oxford County Liberals said...

Maybe you can double check this, BCL, but it appears the group has been deleted altogether?

Oxford County Liberals said...

Ok, it's still there. Must have been a FB glitch.

Ibis said...

Just a note: no friends or just being friends with one other person does not a sock puppet make (necessarily). On Facebook, I only have one friend, and I've only ever joined groups against Harper's Conservatives (total probably 4 or 5). I haven't got into the whole Facebook culture (the complexity, especially in the past with networks etc.), and the fact that it's in my real name as opposed to my online persona have been deterrents.

bigcitylib said...

Ibis,

Not in a single case, no. When the numbers start to pile up you have to start to wonder if these aren't friends that were created to bulk up the numbers to the facebook site, and for no other reason.

CK said...

well, well, will wonders ever cease.

I remembered that old Facebook group (it got mysteriously shut down after about a month and half after its' creation), Let's Deport Shona Holmes.

There was one shill from one of those American public interest groups looking to make sure Obamacare never saw the light of Day; CMPI; also, of the same group who first approached Shona Holmes in 2007 to meet with the press club. All of a sudden, this clown had 'invented' trolls. Unless he had quintuplets as sisters as well as other faceless accounts.