Cuban government blames Twitter for unrest

Foreign Affairs Minister of Cuba Bruno Rodriguez, earlier said, "I have conclusive evidence that the bulk of those that participated in this internet campaign was in the US and used automated systems to make content go viral, without being punished by Twitter."

The Minister had already declined that the island experienced a social explosion when thousands of residents took to the streets chanting Freedom and 'Down with the dictatorship'.

Following the statement, the Minister termed it as a communication and information war against Cuba. The Minister added, "So who is to blame? Authorities point to the hashtag '#SOSCuba', which was launched in the month of early July to outline Cuba's healthcare crisis, the rise in the COVID-19 cases, and to ask for foreign humanitarian aid."

A Spanish social media expert - Julian Macias Tovar, stated there is something unusual in the figures around the hashtag. He further told a local media and cited, "Between July 5, when the hashtag #SOSCuba was used for the first time, and the eighth, there were just around 5,000 tweets."

He further pointed out that the number of tweets rose to approximately 100,000 tweets on July 9, 500,00 on the 10th, 1.5 million the following day and two million on July 12 2021.

Macias Tovar stated that "The accounts tweeting with the #SOSCuba hashtag "came from many different places, and I believe there's an international network of accounts linked ideologically."

He has claimed that these accounts were similar to those that attacked Mexico's leftist - President Andres Manuel Lopez & the leftist governments of Argentina and Spain and added that "This is a case of fake accounts or automated accounts programmed to provide a large number of tweets."