29 September 2009 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Secret service investigates Facebook Obama assassination poll

A Facebook poll asking users to vote whether US President Barack Obama should be killed was hastily removed from the social networking site after its existence was revealed to company officials.

The poll was created by a user of the third-party application Polls, which has now been pulled from Facebook. Facebook's director of policy communications Barry Schnitt told Raw Story on Monday: "The application that enabled a user to create the offensive poll was brought to our attention this morning and was disabled.

"We're following up [with] the developer to ensure the offending content has been removed and that they have better procedures in place going forward to monitor their user-generated content."

The poll asked voters whether President Obama should be killed, with the four options "yes," "maybe," "no" and "if he cuts my health care."

The poll was disabled on Monday and results are not available, though according to Raw Story, as of midday on Monday, 90 per cent of respondents had voted "no," with a little over five per cent voting "yes," 2.6 per cent "maybe" and 1.9 voting that the President should die "if he cuts my health care."

It is unclear whether the poll was a serious criticism of President Obama's regime or nothing more than a misjudged bit of fun (not accounting for taste), but the US secret service is taking no chances - particularly as the poll results suggest that 10 per cent of respondents agreed with the sentiment to some degree. Spokesman Darrin Blackford states that the secret service "will take the appropriate investigative steps."

The stir caused by the assassination poll may cause Facebook to engage in more stringent monitoring of third party applications in the future.