OK – bear with me, because, as I say, I have no idea about the implications of things on Facebook.
But people “friend” other people to show that they follow the affairs of those people, right? If Palin’s “real” account had “friend” status, why would she need her fake account to also have friend status?
I’m certain I’ve heard of people with hundreds, or even thousands, of Facebook “friends.” That doesn’t imply a cautious vetting process to me.
No. The damning evidence (to an extent) is that this FB persona is friends with her father and other Palin-circle folks. The article linked in the OP suggests that the real damning evidence is that she’s a fan of Bristol’s and Sarah’s fan pages - but anyone can be a fan of those. To be friends (not “a fan of”) with someone, each have to confirm it. Public figures (like Palin’s actual account, Obama, etc.) will set up a non-fan page and have staffers friend everyone and provide content.
The other possibility is that the pages for her father and everyone else are fake as well - but that’s incredibly small. However, it’s unlikely at this point her father will actually confirm that’s his facebook account.
Yes. Yes she does.
Glad you’re admitting that.
No, you couldn’t.
You could send a friend request, but that doesn’t mean that the person whom you sent it to, would accept it.
How do you explain the fact that Palin’s family members accepted the friend request from “Lou Sarah”?
:dubious:
Yeah. What’s the problem?
Wrong again. Generally, people “friend” other people with whom they have some relationship.
To “follow the affairs” of a celebrity of public figure, one “Likes” their FaceBook page. (As Munch mentioned, this is otherwise known as becoming a “Fan of” some figure’s page.)
There are three (okay, many many more) types of people who use Facebook.
Public figures. They’ll have millions of FB friends or followers. Facebook decided a few years ago they’d rather they set up fan pages instead of “people” accounts, but it still happens.
High school teenage girls. They have a weird goal of having as many friends as they physically can.
Regular people. They “friend” their friends in an effort to communicate with them via FB.
Sarah Palin has an account #1 - it’s probably run by a staffer (most politicians do). The OP article is suggesting she also has an account #3 in order to communicate with a handful of people that she interacts with semi-regularly. This account has a grand total of 12 friends. (Her father’s account has 181 friends - which is not unusual.)
Let’s leave John McCain out of this. 
People can set up pages that you can be a “fan” of which lets you in on their activities. Palin has a page like this.
To “friend” they have to accept the request. Some folks, especially those who are heavily into Facebook games, will friend anyone and everyone that they can, in order to get more points or advance levels in their game. Most users are more discriminating, since being a “friend” allows people access to everything you post, allows them access to post content on your wall, their posts show up in your news feed. It would be irritating if you actually used Facebook for communicating with your real friends.
Those people have to accept those friend requests, suggesting they recognize the name/e-mail account.
I was kidding. Pretend my post ended with this: 
In my opinion, that happened around mid-2009. I have no idea what credibility she might have gained since then. Can you spare a clue for a fellow Doper down on his luck?
Well, it’s clear I know nothing about Facebook. I’ll accept the verdict of those who know better than I what the significance of this is.
I’ve wondered whether or not most famous people have facebook and other site sockpuppets, one being their official site with 200,000 friends or fans and the other so they can share the “can’t decide what to have for lunch” type stuff for their actual friends and family.
Other things that are clear:
Unlike many of your fellow defenders of Republican ideology, you understand the first rule of holes. Good for you, Bricker.
And, equally clearly, you will on occasion leap into a thread and defend righties without carefully thinking through the issues under discussion. This tends to detract from whatever remaining reputation you have for reasonableness. Bad for you, Bricker.
Sarah Palin is funny. 
I’m sure many of them do. (The funny thing about the Sarah Palin site isn’t that she has a sock account, but that her sock account “likes” everything posted by her official account).
There isn’t much. At worst, she took advantage of a weakness of the system-----possibly to afford herself some free P.R., but maybe more just to have an alias that only those “in the know” would recognize. Allowing her to participate in Facebook and make day-to-day personal comments to others without all the associated scrutiny. Regular Sarah instead of Sarah Palin, Incorporated.
Maybe not the most dignified play in the world, but there’s something inherently ludicrous about the Facebook environment to begin with, where well-known figures are using exactly the same medium as that woman you barely remember from seventh grade who’s now heavily into Jesus and her cats.
I can see it, and needless to say Ms. Palin and I are not Friends.
There is no ‘significance’ to this, other than it’s just one more piece of evidence that Sarah Palin is a very silly person, and fully worthy of the mockery she receives by those who recognize that mockery is the only attention she’s worthy of.
Sheesh. To you, this is reasoned skepticism, is it? I ask merely for information.
The extreme yet adamantine credulousness of conservatives passeth all understanding…
As a fellow “99er”, Bricker, I have a vague recollection that your posts once used to be held in a significant degree of respect, but I now suspect that’s merely evidence of memory decline…
The linked article reports that only one among all the pre-publication pages of leaked Palin emails happened to show Palin’s own personal Gmail address, not the Gmail address of “Lou Sarah”. Wonkette then searched for that Gmail address on Facebook, and found it attached to “Lou Sarah’s” FB profile.
I hesitate to claim that this makes it impossible to have been a forgery of some sort, but only to the extent that it’s also not impossible that President Obama’s “Kenyan” parents had the foresight to plant fake birth announcements in Hawaii’s newspapers all those years ago as part of a fiendish plan to create what espionage writers refer to as a “legend” to enable the secret emplacement of a Kenyan communist-fascist Muslim dictator with plans to steal Americans’ guns and forcibly compel dangerously wise conservative heroes such as yourself into concentration / re-education camps hidden along the secret (and apparently invisible) NAFTA superhighway.
Also, had some nefarious enemy of the sainted Palin clan wished to plant some politically embarrassing or even incriminating evidence employing the “Lou Sarah” Facebook profile, I must confess I find it difficult to credit that such an enemy would not reach higher than to merely repeatedly praise Sarah Palin’s universally noted brilliance and her daughter’s dancing skills. In fact, I can’t imagine anything that even could embarrass the Palin clan, at least beyond what their own Herculean efforts have already achieved in that regard…
Had nothing to do with “Thinking things through.” Based on my knowledge of Facebook, the first links didn’t make a convincing case.
After I shared my skepticism, many people posted, advising me that I didn’t understand Facebook as well as I thought I did. And seriously – this, by you, is a spirited defense? “So why should I conclude that an e-mail address revealed in that book that’s meant to slam Palin, that’s linked to a phony Palin account is real as opposed to an effort to slam her?”
The answer to “Why should I…?” was “Because Facebook ‘friend’ doesn’t mean what you thought it meant.”
So I learned that my initial impression was wrong.