Cuba slammed Meta, Facebook’s parent company, on Friday, accusing it of “double standards” by “censoring” Cuban accounts on the one hand and allowing “disinformation and destabilization operations” on the other island.
• Also read: Facebook and Instagram launch paid subscription in Australia and New Zealand
• Also read: A billion users, stars and controversies: 5 things to know about TikTok
The day before, Meta announced it had disabled fake pro-government accounts in Cuba and Bolivia, which the group said were used to discredit opponents and “like” pro-government content.
“We reject the new hypocrisy and complicity of these companies with a well-known history of disinformation and destabilization operations on digital platforms against Cuba,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel responded on his Twitter account.
Ben Nimmo, one of the California group’s security managers, explained during a video conference call with AFP on Thursday that an attempt had been made to “hide who is behind all this”. “But our investigation found links to the Cuban government,” he added.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez condemned the “manipulation and double standards used by transnational (dis)information consortia against Cuba,” adding that one meta-official was “the former campaign manager of an anti-Cuban Republican senator.”
In Cuba, Meta deactivated 363 Facebook accounts, as well as 270 Pages and 229 Groups and 72 Instagram accounts.
The American company “must explain its own disingenuous and biased behavior in allowing it to denigrate, stigmatize and provoke hate campaigns from Florida against our country,” Mr. Rodriguez continued.
Cuba will continue to defend the revolution, including in the “digital sphere in the face of harassment and destabilizing operations,” he added.
Mobile internet has been available in Cuba, which has a population of 11.1 million, since 2018.
After the historic protests of July 11, 2021, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets shouting “Freedom!” and “We’re hungry!” Havana had accused Washington of fueling these protests via social networks.