Neizens angry after Parliament Facebook pulls amnesty survey

Parliament's Facebook team under House Speaker Somsak Kiatsuranont is facing howls of protest from the cyber-world for removing an online survey on an amnesty law after dislikes far outweighed likes.

"Why did you delete the voting results? Do you fear the real facts? You should accept the truth," posted Mossiam Mos.

In the three days from Thursday, when a question was posted on Parliament's Facebook page asking for comments, to Sunday night when the question and answers were pulled, there were 2,341 agreeing and 7,455 disagreeing with an amnesty law.

Social media users criticised the action.

Ploiiz Pyromancer Meowko: "You should show this poll at all times".

Joice Manukul: "You should show the poll to make people believe that you are sincere".

Arcom Thahong: "If you want a result like the result in your mind, you should do research in Red TV".

Mistertanom Pangpa: "Why did you delete the poll? This is a parliament that's always closed its eyes to people".

Rung Kha: "I already voted but now I cannot see my vote".

Auychai Kulpong: "Where is the other 29 poll on social media?"

Finally the admin page of the "Deep Search Team" posted an explanation: "A social media monitoring research house posted this question for more than 30 online media to collect 'deep' information from March 7-10 and then gather all information for data analysis."

Noppadon Kannika, director of Abac Poll, commented that this type of survey is called a "social mentions" survey and is mostly used by the business sector to gather marketing data or do deep analysis about how much a product is being mentioned on social media.

He added that when a social mentions survey was used to measure political opinion it was difficult to gather data because the majority of people do not use social media.

"The online survey was not scientific because it did not choose a representative sample" Noppadon said.

The admin post said researchers would analyse all posts called "Mention" by age, occupation, education and location.