Fake profiles and coordination with Venezuela: How Cuba’s propaganda spreads on Twitter

Since Cuba gradually began expanding Internet access, dissidents, activists, and independent journalists reported harassment by state security on social media. In 2014, Fariñas said that state security agents created false accounts on Twitter and Facebook to post adverse content and create division among opponents. — Dreamstime/TNS

Twitter user Mariam Gómez claims to be “faithful to the homeland and the Cuban Revolution” on her account @mpgcibermambisa. But her profile picture, a woman showing her bare back, comes not from a real person but from an article about how gradual tanning is back.

On his Twitter profile, user Kaleb Guevara reproduces a phrase attributed to Ernesto “Che” Guevara: “The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” The profile photo is also a reminder of the controversial Argentine figure, a young dark-haired man with a beard and a cigarette on his lips. But it does not belong to someone named “Kaleb Guevara” but to the Canadian model Nick Bateman.