Identity or Falsehood, what does Twitter analyze in the case of Cuba?

Identity or Falsehood, what does Twitter analyze in the case of Cuba?
Fecha de publicación: 
28 October 2020
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Personal data, names, surnames, birthday, all of them are part of our journey since the day we are born in addition to allowing our identification as unique human beings.

With the boom and expansion of social networks on the Internet, we usually take these personal data to our personal profiles. However, some users are still cautious when posting their data. In some scenarios, where millions of individuals coexist and interact — Twitter is one of them — there are not only personal profiles, but some also represent institutions, companies, organizations and social movements and so are their executive’s, who provide update on the work of their entities, their workers, and their social role before the population.

But, what happen when someone, carelessly, decide to duplicate these profiles to boost messages quite distant from the way of acting and thinking of the lawful holder.

In the case of Cuba, we could not ascertain the existence of duplicated accounts of our Ministers in Twitter. Nonetheless, we did found some ministries’ accounts where they took the user name of the entity and the word “exile” was afterward added; all of them were created in 2020, with few followers and with no content to show. One handicap is then the insignificant presence of certified accounts, both institutional and that of the Ministers, due to the app’s limitation and the cumbersome of the process in Cuba. The lack of interest of companies to certificate them was denoted as well.

If that was not enough, the emergence of parody accounts grows in Twitter, if and when it can be particularized that “there is no bond. Hence, words such as parody, fake, fan, or comment, among others, can be added in the biography or the account name. The fact that there is no bond must be highlighted so the target audience may understand it.” But most do not highlight it. They rather usurp the profiles and deceive users with regards to the goal of the entity.

Fake news, manipulation, and the creation of fake profiles are trendy in social networks. The strategy against the island consists of creating new accounts after any announcement of campaigns, speeches or mobilization on the Internet by revolutionary activists, and all in less than a week, with no followers or contents posted on their own. But all have a clear target: to undermine the hashtags and provoke a negative balance in the content posted.  Or simply, Twitter claims the right to ban the profiles of the most influential users or organizations by claiming that they fail to comply with its regulations and forbidding the presence in debates.

The creation of this social bot is not coincidence. Behind this maneuverings, there are US agencies collaborating with the social network itself. Due to its popularity and growing number of followers, the microblogging network is not only for pure entertainment, but also carries a political background very capable of destabilizing great societies by means of propaganda, following strategic interests and operations.

The use of robots to amplify messages, steal identities, fake or altered multimedia contents, and the violation of copyright, constitute ground for suspension of the accounts and Twitter has the mechanism to detect when contents are created automatically with its multiple measurement tools. But it seems this social network ignores them and involves specifically in the selective banning of Cuban profiles in clutch, newsworthy events.

It seems that the US’s double-standard denounced by our President Miguel Díaz-Canel on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the UN has already extended to Twitter, which plays into the hands of the US government and its hostile policy towards Cuba.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff

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