Update 10 Oct 2012: Hello Mother Jones readers. Check here for my response to Erika Eichelberger’s story.

I checked Facebook this evening to find status updates from Mitt Romney’s campaign in my Facebook news feed. Thinking this was one of those stupid “promoted” updates that you see on Twitter, I gave it no mind. That is, until I found yet another update from the Romney campaign in my news feed. It was then that I surfed over to the Mitt Romney Facebook page and discovered to my shock that I was listed as “liking” that page.

Umm, no. Obama has raised my ire more than once, of course, but there is no way I’m voting for that clueless millionaire buffoon I call “Rmoney.” How Facebook came to think I would like the Romney page is quite the mystery.

A fellow geek suggested (I assume half-jokingly) that a Romney virus might be responsible for the status change. While I laughed at the suggestion, now I’m wondering if there might be truth to it. I have seen updates saying some friend of mine liked Mitt Romney, only to be surprised that person would do so knowing what I know of them. Not everyone wears their politics on their sleeve the way I do, but when you see multiple instances of this kid of thing you do begin to wonder if these choices aren’t being made without the knowledge of the account holders.



Just for shits and grins, I checked Facebook’s “All Activity” page for my account (you most likely can’t see the info in my link yourselves, but your account has a similar page. Munge the URL accordingly to see yours). I found where I “unliked” Mitt Romney’s page this evening, but going back to August 1st, it never showed me ever liking Mitt Romney’s page!

Something very, very fishy is going on here. While I’ve dealt with many online scams before this one makes me mad as hell that someone would hijack my Facebook influence to misinterpret my political leanings.

Update 10:24 PM: I checked through my Facebook “likes” going back to October 14, 2011, a time when only Massachusetts residents knew who this jackass was. The activity never shows me liking the Romney page! I strongly suspect an outsider is manipulating the Facebook database directly to set the like status without Facebook properly logging it.

Update 14 September: Read my full explanation here. I hear from other Facebook users that this is still going on, by the way. Join the Hacked By Mitt Romney Facebook group to join in.