Facebook takes down hundreds of fake accounts linked to the Cuban government targeting critics
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it has taken down hundreds of fake accounts linked to the Cuban government and its institutions that were posting propaganda on Facebook and Instagram and attacking critics in Cuba and the United States.
In its quarterly Adversarial Threat report released Thursday, the company said it removed 363 accounts, 270 pages and 229 groups on Facebook and 72 Instagram accounts related to Cuba for violating its policies against “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” The term refers to attempts at concealing or misleading people about who is behind campaigns to manipulate public debate.
According to the report, the network originated in Cuba and targeted Cubans on the island and abroad. Meta said that despite efforts by the accounts to conceal who they were, the company’s investigation found the people running the operation had “links to the Cuban government and its various institutions.”
The Cuban covert network reached a broad audience. Combined, the Facebook pages had 650,000 followers, and at least 510,000 accounts joined the groups. The Instagram accounts amassed 8,000 followers.
Meta said its researchers have noticed an increase in “domestic influence operations, which are particularly concerning when they combine deceptive techniques with the real-world power of a state.”
Cuban authorities have long used social media to spread propaganda and attack critics, according to accounts of students who were part of the effort. State journalists and workers are also ordered to like and spread government content.
On Friday, Cuba’s foreign affairs minister, Bruno Rodriguez, reacted to the report.
“We denounce manipulation & double standards with which transnational corporations of (mis)information operate against #Cuba,” he said. He said that Meta “should explain its own unauthentic & biased behavior when permitting others to denigrate & launch hatred campaigns from Florida vs. our country.”
The operation dismantled by Meta used fake accounts to share and like pro-government content. But Meta said it also entailed the creation of “more elaborate fictitious personal brands that featured distinctive logos, profile photos, visual styles and hashtags.” These more sophisticated profiles posted articles, videos, photos and memes targeting members of the opposition and Cubans on the island and in the United States who have criticized the government.
The network spread memes with photos of its targets, calling them “worms,” a pejorative term coined by Fidel Castro to refer to government critics.
Compared to a similar network that Meta dismantled in Bolivia that also targeted critics of that country’s government — and which spent more than a $1 million dollars in Facebook advertising — the Cuban operation was run almost without money for promotion purposes. But the fact that it spent $100 in advertising, paid in U.S. currency, suggests the payment was made abroad because the U.S. embargo on Cuba prohibits such transactions.
Rodriguez, the foreign minister, seemed to confirm that was the case, tweeting that paying for advertisements on Facebook is “a service that is not accessible to #Cuba due to the blockade,” the term Cuban authorities use to refer to the embargo.
