Facebook Papers and Subversion in CubaThe publication of the so-called Facebook Files, a compendium of documents published by a consortium of 17 media outlets, including CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, once again puts the finger on the sore spot regarding the role of the hate vending machine that the popular social network has become. The new revelations added detail to the leaks by former company employee Frances Haugen published in October 2021 in the Wall Street Journal and repeated in sessions before the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament. It is now known that the company's policy of putting its profits first when it comes to disinformation, lack of control and absence of internal precautionary measures, influenced the violence of the Trumpist hordes that stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2020. According to the documents, after the U.S. presidential election of November 2020, the company fell into neglect and deactivated the precautionary measures that had been taken to prevent election day chaos. Many of the workers who in the months leading up to the elections had been part of the prevention team against fake news and hateful content, took leaves of absence or changed positions, and dozens of adopted rules were reversed. The new revelations show that the social network barely dedicates resources to combat false information outside the United States, and its effectiveness is almost nil in developing countries such as India, currently the country with the most Facebook users in the world. A report prepared by the company itself indicates that in 2020, 84 per cent of the actions against false information on Facebook and Instagram (owned by Facebook) occurred in the U.S., despite the fact that the vast majority of users are outside the U.S. Among other information, the "papers" offer more details about the lack of resources allocated by the company to eliminate hate speech, and indicate that two years ago Facebook reduced the time that human moderators spend reviewing user complaints regarding hate speech. But nothing, at least so far, has been said in the new documents about the use of Facebook as a media weapon against those nations that are not to the liking of the U.S. government. The denunciation of such corporate behavior was already made a few years ago by another former employee of the company, Jaron Lanier, in his book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. In the chapter entitled "The Arab Spring" the author notes: "The Arab Spring was an occasion for hearty self-congratulation in Silicon Valley. We claimed it as our glory at the time. 'Facebook Revolution' and 'Twitter Revolution' were common tropes back then. "We gathered in front of big screens watching kids in Tahir Square in Cairo taking on a despotic government and we were in love. We celebrated as ordinary citizens used social media to tell NATO where to target strikes. Social media put a modern army at the fingertips of ordinary users." Although ten years have passed since the Arab Spring, Facebook's policy in this regard has not changed much, at least as far as Cuba is concerned. This is corroborated by someone who seems to agree with the use of Facebook as an instrument of incitement to hatred and terrorism: Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez. According to this so-called expert on the subject, a character invented during the Bush administration to serve as a megaphone for anti-Cuban propaganda on social networks: "When the protests began in Cuba on July 11, Facebook accounts and their ability to broadcast live demonstrations were the key elements for a people that had been muzzled for more than a century to find their voice. The confluence that had been created in cyberspace, in a country where the right of association is severely limited, broke the barrier of mistrust and fear that had paralyzed citizens until then." And in her commentary published by the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, as if to leave no one in doubt of the subversive role the Facebook hate machine plays against Cuba, she adds: "Social networks and instant messaging services have remained the fundamental stage of rebellion. The Archipiélago platform, the main organizer of the civic march called for November 15, has used the potential of the digital group to unite more than 30,000 members. For them, Facebook has been the only possibility to meet and debate." The "civic march" to which the also "independent journalist" alludes, claims to be a new edition of the "rebellion," that is, of the violent actions that took place last July 11 in Cuba, called via Internet by the "voice" of the imperial master with the purpose, in an opportunistic and cowardly manner in the midst of a world pandemic, of increasing and justifying the blockade that the U.S. has maintained against Cuba for more than sixty years. Another attempt to implement, at some point successfully, an Arab Spring on the island. Their faith in the ability of Facebook algorithms to hack minds with the merchandise of hate is shared by the anti-Cuban annexationist mafia of Miami, which after the events of July 11 has not ceased to ask President Biden, in addition to a military intervention on the island, to implement a plan to offer free Internet to Cubans to supposedly combat the "censorship" of the "regime" in Havana. In reality, since the days of the Iranian Green Wave, the blogger and her friends in Miami -- with the help of the "impartial" voracity of profits from Facebook and other social networks -- dream of bringing about "regime change" on the island and the prosperity of the "peaceful democracies" that today prevail in countries such as Libya and Syria. (CubaSi.cu, November 1, 2021. Translated from original Spanish by TML.)
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