The agency best known for overseeing billions of dollars in US humanitarian aid, the US Agency for International Development, paid for and ran a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government. They developed a subscriber-based messaging network that provided news on sports, music, and weather. Its subscribers were never aware it was created by the US government or that their private data might be used for political purposes. The goal of the network was to introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize “smart mobs” – mass gatherings to trigger a “Cuban Spring.”
The social network was called ZunZuneo, a nod to Twitter: ZunZuneo is slang for a Cuban hummingbird’s tweet. These guys should be working on Mad Ave not Pennsylvania Ave.
AP broke the story. Read more, here.
