The list of government-backed social media interference efforts got a surprising addition last month when a news report revealed that the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), a U.S. government media outfit aimed at Cuban audiences, had plotted out a series of “non-branded” Facebook pages to reach Cuban audiences.
Coming on the heels of revelations about Russian and Iranian fake Facebook campaigns, the news called into question the anger emanating from Washington over the parallel programs pushed by Moscow and Tehran. While a spokesperson for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the OCB, told ThinkProgress that the Facebook program “is no longer in progress,” the project, like its Russian and Iranian predecessors, nonetheless planned to aim material at unsuspecting Facebook users without disclosing ties to its ultimate source
But on Tuesday, a source familiar with the OCB told ThinkProgress that the program — which was also planned for other social media platforms — never got off the ground. The source also shared details of what the program would have looked like, emphasizing the legality of the program along the way.
“Nobody has gotten the story right,” the source, who agreed to comment on the condition of anonymity, told ThinkProgress. “It was nothing illegal, and nothing that goes against the policies of the [OCB].”
According to the source, the OCB’s campaign — which was mentioned in recent “Congressional Budget Justification” documents, and was first reported by the Miami New Times — didn’t center on fake personae or fake pages, as the Russian and Iranian campaigns had. Rather, the program would have relied on already existing Facebook accounts to copy-and-paste material from the OCB. The theory, per the source, was that Cuban audiences would be more susceptible to reading the material if it was posted by a friend or by a non-American source, rather than if it was on the OCB’s website or official Facebook page.
If people “re-post[ed] what you write, and… it doesn’t come from you but it comes from a friend of mine that re-posted you, I would read that, and I would follow that,” the source said. “And when you republish, you don’t even have to credit it, so it was just as simple as that — just having a network of people in Cuba.”
Legal lines
In speaking with ThinkProgress, the source repeatedly pointed out that there was nothing illegal in the operation. Indeed, the planned Facebook operations in Cuba appear legal, at least according to U.S. law. However, other similar programs from U.S.-funded outlets have recently landed those publications in legal jeopardy. For instance, the New York Times reported this summer that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S.-funded publication, directed Facebook ads toward U.S. citizens “in potential violation of longstanding laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda.”
Likewise, the source noted that the wording in the budget justification documents, which alluded to the “creat[ion]” of new “non-branded local Facebook accounts,” may have been confusing.
“Anything that’s produced with the taxpayers’ money is available for anyone to republish, no?” the source noted. “[The ‘Congressional Budget Justification’ document] has a wording that sounds like something, but it’s not that. It’s very simple — it’s people re-posting things on their timeline. And when it says ‘non-branded,’ it’s that they were taking our content and just sharing it. As simple as that… There’s nothing illegal about that.”
As it is, the source added that the program “was never executed anyway.” There’s no evidence the program was ever implemented.
Few others appear willing to comment about the program. Neither Facebook nor representatives from the OCB responded to ThinkProgress’ requests for comment last week. Former OCB head Andre Mendes, however, told ThinkProgress that he hadn’t heard anything about the program during his tenure, which ended earlier this year.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Mendes told ThinkProgress. “I wasn’t aware of it, so it came as a surprise to me.”
And it’s worth noting that the OCB’s Facebook program, if it had gotten off the ground, would have differed with the Russian and Iranian campaigns in two notable ways: The content shared on the Facebook accounts in question (divisive trolling versus journalistic pieces) and the audiences targeted (those in liberal democracies versus those in a one-party dictatorship). To Mendes, the notion that the OCB has pushed misinformation — as the Russian and Iranian pages had — was ludicrous.
“It’s one of the things that has been very unfair about the way that the OCB has been portrayed at times, as being propaganda, as having some noxious intentions,” Mendes said. “During the time that I was there it was [full of] responsible journalists who were telling the truth.”