[Original version of this post in Spanish. Translated by the author Joan Antoni Guerrero @joanantoni70]
Cuba wanted to celebrate the New Year in the social media simulating a spontaneous initiative in Twitter to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the “Caravana de la Libertad” [sp], that is, doing spam. The leaders of the revolution thought about taking the most important microblogging net fot their own affairs but they were scalded. Their plan clashed with the platform’s criteria of good behavior. Those clear rules are available for all. Everybody must know whether any of the uses is in the list of suspicious things, Twitter could cancel profiles (you can read this article to clear up concepts about this issue [sp]).
I don’t like robots on Twitter, not even when they distribute messages which I could agree. I detest these techniques to distribute information because they only bother and invade the social media with messages that not always give us the best links. I prefer to follow profiles that give me a special selection of data and information, and not an obsessive bombing.
Now Cuba says [sp] Twitter blocked for political reasons almost one thousand profiles of young Cubans. They are so cynical that the regime’s representatives have accused [sp] the company for violating the right to speech freedom of all these young people. As you can see, there is no shame.
It’s true. Cuba has the capacity to mobilize thousands of Cubans, bring them together in official places, and make them act as an authentic automats in a “Joven Club” (rooms where people have access to computers although, besides propaganda, many Cubans know that computers in these places are out of order. Also, the Internet connection that is offered there is dubious. But well, for the regime it is enough to say that this exist in the Island. They would give some necessary statistics, and anyone who doesn’t know the reality could believe it; in Cuba, everything is like this). Those wouldn’t go to the “Joven Club” for their love to the Revolution, neither for unrestrained wishes to celebrate the 54th anniversary of a historical fact under the hash tag #Caravana54. They went there to obey orders, accomplish and obligation, carry out a task, enslaved for the occasion, used in order to achieve decadent regime’s propagandistic proposals.
Everybody in Cuba knows what a “tarea” (task) and an “orientación” (orientation) are, from where it comes and what could happen if you accomplish it or not. Therefore, these young Cubans whom regime says are being censored by Twitter were first of all compelled and conducted to obey this task in one of these “Joven Club”. And all is hypothetical and supposed, because probably most of these profiles were opened from the same IP and maybe one person was in charge to open 30 or 50 accounts and then manage them afterwards. The objective was to bulk the net and achieve a Trending Topic, attract attention and give a false idea of people’s support to the Revolution in social media.
Thus, these youngsters arrived in Twitter with the unique goal to add some filling in the hash tag #Caravana54. These are profiles created for the occasion and that probably will die after the campaign. At the same time, reading the tweets everybody can realize the prefabricated and not spontaneous writings, tweets written by taking dictation, copy/paste of 140 characters. How is it possible that Twitter doesn’t consider this use as a result of an action nor natural, neither free or spontaneous? Not knowing the company’s version about the issue, I’m happy to know that the platform has mechanisms to intercept this kind of campaigns which, whatever their sign, I think are a manipulation of social media.
With Castro brothers’ regime you can’t be careless, because they are capable to manipulate the situation and make the most of everything, even when they are intercepted with reasons.
Give private internet to the Cuban people and stop manipulating. We will see then which kind of Trending Topics triumph in the real Cuba. The Cuba not silenced, the free one, the one that is still waiting to be born.
You can judge.
[video in Spanish]