In the last 24 hours anti equality campaigners have been setting up fake Yes to equality Facebook pages and then posting links around to large groups like the 26,000 strong anti water charges group. The intention being to trick people into voting No by trying to give credence to the fevered imaginations of homophobes.
In the last 24 hours anti equality campaigners have been setting up fake Yes to equality Facebook pages and then posting links around to large groups like the 26,000 strong anti water charges group. The intention being to trick people into voting No by trying to give credence to the fevered imaginations of homophobes.
We are not linking to the fake pages or giving their full names as the way Facebook works this would result in making these fake posts visible to more people. But the image is a screen shot of one such post with part of the page name obscured.
That particular fake Yes page only had 5 likes, one of those being that of a known No campaigner.
It seems unlikely that they can swing many votes this way. We would also hope that by circulating that this is going on that anyone who might have been fooled by the ‘we are not homophobic but about children rights’ spin will realise exactly how honest those spouting such nonsense are.
We would ask people to keep an eye out for such fake posts and when you see them post a comment pointing out they are fake. Their fakeness is pretty obvious to anyone involved in the campaign but they do seem to have fooled a few people.
WORDS: Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )
Note: 103,000 people saw this story on Facebook by the time polls closed