Hey everyone. I'm the developer of the Facebook Poll Application that hosted the "Should Obama be killed?" poll. You can read about it here.
I'm sure you have all sorts of assumptions about me, my application, and how this went down, but I want to start by listing a series of facts followed by an open-ended Q&A.
Facts
- Neither I nor the application have any affiliation with Facebook.
- Polls are created by other Facebook users, not me, anyone affiliated with me, or Facebook.
- I am the sole person responsible for maintaining, policing, and developing the application.
- Thousands of polls are created daily, sometimes as many as 10,000. Each poll has as many as 2MM votes and 200k comments. Of those thousands of polls, most are gibberish and a few are offensive, libelous, or otherwise beyond the pale.
-
Facebook provides a mechanism for contacting the developer. For most truly outrageous, offensive, etc. polls I get an email directly from a user. If the poll is over the line -- as this one clearly was -- I delete it immediately and take further action as necessary.
- Not a single person contacted me directly about this poll.
- There is an automated reporting system in place, where users can report individual polls. Once a poll reaches a certain threshold of reports it is placed in a queue which I review daily. I reviewed it this morning and deleted the offending poll.
- The poll was created Sunday evening and I deleted it first thing Monday morning. Facebook is not on call for these kinds of things, but I am. The only way Facebook can act is by banning my application, which they did.
- I live on the west coast.
- I've been an Obama supporter for a long time -- he was my state representative in Illinois -- and I've been on this site for over two years.
Q&A
I'm now open for questions. Please be respectful. I will answer each question individually and openly.
