Facebook pulls Obama assassination poll

Social website Facebook yanked a poll this week about assassinating President Barack Obama after being contacted by the U.S. Secret Service.

On Monday, Facebook dropped a question that asked voters whether the U.S. president "should be killed."

The social networking company made the move after receiving a request from the Secret Service, other web services reported.

"We are aware of [the poll]," Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service, told the Plum Line, a service of the Washington Post newspaper. "We are taking the appropriate investigative steps."

The poll was created by a third-party application and gave participants the option of responding yes, no, maybe or "if he cuts my health care".

About 750 Facebook users voted on the poll before the web service disabled the entire application.

Little editing

Facebook generally does a minimal amount of editing of web interactions on its site.

In fact, although the Obama assassination poll was taken down, another survey asking whether the person who devised the poll "should be assassinated" remains up. There was no word on the results of the second survey.

Experts say such use of technology is bound to take place.

"Let's face it: From the printing press to the telegraph, to radio and television and the internet, innovation has always been a double-edged sword," Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance, said in a Facebook interview posted the previous week.