An “author” named Admin posted over 1,000 articles in seven languages in two weeks.

Earlier this month, Google sent me several notifications for an article entitled “The Internet Is Widely Accessible in Cuba. Why Is the US Insisting It Isn’t?” I checked it out and found that Reese Erlich had posted it on Truthout.org, a left-leaning Web site, on February 12. On the 13th, Cabasi.com published a shortened version of the article and Salon.com published the original version on the 17th. These were all in English, and both Salon and Cubasi credited Truthout.

I also received notification of an article entitled “Internet es ampliamente accesible en Cuba. ¿Por qué Estados Unidos insiste en que no lo es?” that was published February 13 at DiarioDeLatinos.com.

It turns out that DiarioDeLatinos also published English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Russian versions of the same article on the 13th. The seven versions of the article were all written by the same author, Admin, with a little help from Google Translate, which rendered “New York Times” as “New York Instances” in the first paragraph. Admin is prolific—he or she had posted 1,072 articles on DiarioDeLatinos.com as of the morning of February 18th and DiarioDeLatinos.com was registered on February 4th. The registrant organization is Domains By Proxy, LLC, which is located at the GoDaddy Headquarters building in Scottsdale, Arizona:

    Registry Registrant ID: Not Available From Registry
    Registrant Name: Registration Private
    Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
    Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com
    Registrant Street: 14455 N. Hayden Road
    Registrant City: Scottsdale
    Registrant State/Province: Arizona
    Registrant Postal Code: 85260
    Registrant Country: US
    Registrant Phone: +1.4806242599
    Registrant Phone Ext:
    Registrant Fax: +1.4806242598
    Registrant Fax Ext:
    Registrant Email: [email protected]
    Registry Admin ID: Not Available From Registry
    Admin Name: Registration Private

Private domain registration is reminiscent of banks facilitating money laundering. I wonder what else Domains By Proxy is hiding.

Finally, I took a look at what the censors at Cubasi deleted when they edited the original article. They cut mention of tools like the Signal encrypted messaging app and VPNs, the fact that Cubans can download El Nuevo Herald, and Cuba’s blocking of Web sites. They also deleted references to dissidents like Yoani Sanchez or Ladies in White and admissions that only 38 percent of Cubans are connected to the web compared to 70 percent for all of Latin America, 3G wireless is being installed in Cuba while much of the world is switching over to 5G, Cuba lacks convertible currency, Cubans don’t have the bandwidth to stream video and El Paquete is “by far” the most popular technology for Cubans.

This was not Cuba’s first foray into online propaganda. In 2013, Eliécer Ávila described Operation Truth in which 1,000 university students were writing social media posts favoring the government and working as “trolls,” disrupting discussion and attacking those who question the government and last month Granma posted a propaganda/conspiracy article about US subversion.

I wonder how much Internet propaganda the Cuban government-sponsored between 2013 and 2020, and I worry about the fact that any government could do the same.

Update Feb 26, 2020:

A reader sent me a link to a claim of sock-puppet trolls working for the Cuban government and another pointed out that the term of art is “Ciberclaria” and if you Google that term, you will find more examples like this or this.