This Monday, October 24, Twitter marked some Cuban media outlets as "affiliated with the Government" of Cuba, an action that censors and stigmatizes the country's public media, which puts into practice a decision announced by the platform in August 2020 and It affects the recipients and potential readers of tagged media tweets.
Twitter has warned that it will not recommend or amplify among users the accounts or publications of Cubadebate, Radio Rebelde, Radio Habana Cuba, Gramna, Trabajadores, Juventud Rebelde and Canal Caribe, among others, without distinguishing public media financed by union or political organizations. of state public media.
Edilberto Carmona, who manages Cubadebate's social media profiles, assured Cubaperiodistas that the decision "is part of an attempt to classify the media that they consider 'democratic,' and influence public opinion from their positions of power."
“It is ironic that they recognize the existence of large media outlets with these characteristics, such as the BBC or NPR, but that they do not receive these labels, due to their 'editorial independence,'” he said.
“Cubadebate –he specified– has suffered this type of blockade on other occasions, such as the one that occurred in 2019, to its main profile and that of its editors and collaborators, which only puts a stamp on what we knew: reporting from a alternative to the Western geopolitical order is monitored and censored.
For the Spanish analyst Carlos González Penalva, this manipulation of the algorithms to make some media less visible compared to others is part of “the construction of the unanimity of the herd”, that is, imposing a single story. “We have gone from Nazi graffiti to Jews to Twitter branding.”
The methodology used by Twitter to parameterize “government-affiliated media” is discretionary, with nothing to explain why it labels some of the world’s government media this way, not all (or most) of the state or government media; nor to those who receive most of the resources from governments to function, some violating the laws of third countries.
Will ADNCuba, Cubanet or Diario de Cuba, to cite an example, which receive money from US federal institutions for “regime change in Cuba”, appear with the label “media affiliated with the US Government”?
There is an obvious pejorative frame in that selection for political convenience. With this, Twitter shows its own “editorial line”.
The platform manages content, like any other means of communication, in this case one that is guided by the laws and stereotypes of its Government, that of the United States.
It does not “moderate content”, as it often repeats to cover up its actions, but filters and manages information under a political bias.
(Taken from Cubaperiodistas)
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