Preserve Marriage Washington—or Lithuania?

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10/31/2012

by Jeremy Hooper

I too have been curious about Preserve Marriage Washington's uniquely "liked" Facebook page. While all of the other state campaigns have four digits in their like tally, the Preserve Marriage Washington page has been showing a whopping 18,000+ for several weeks now. Even more bizarre, since they spent the summer essentially begging people to like their page—a page that, at the time, was showing "like" patterns in line with the other four states.

Our side's campaign, Washington United For Marriage, was watching too. We're calling them out:

While Washington United for Marriage (WUM), the broad coalition working to defend the state’s marriage law and approve Referendum 74, has gradually and organically built its Facebook page to more than 52,000 fans or “likes”, lead opponents have taken the opposite route, apparently buying “likes” to create an inflated online community much larger than they actually have.

As the graphs shown here and below this release attest, Preserve Marriage Washington (PMW) had approximately 2,500 Facebook fans until late summer when its page exploded in numbers over just a few days. It would be the first of four such bursts, all of them linking to overseas locations. Also, accessed here are the screen shots of PMW’s Facebook page, which are time stamped and confirm a pattern of inexplicable spikes in its fan base.
KEEP READING: Opponent’s Facebook Scam: Sudden Spikes in “Like” Numbers, International “Favorite Cities” Suggest False, Inflated Fan Base [Washington United]