Twitter and the Castro regime: a case of what’s sauce for the goose?

Twitter has blocked the accounts of the Cuban leader Raúl Castro, his daughter Mariela, several state media and several dozen journalists, reviving the debate about governments’ use/misuse of social networks. The move follows Twitter’s recent complaints about Beijing’s use of its network, YouTube and Facebook to spread disinformation about the Hong Kong protesters, in what seems to be becoming a global trend.

What can social networks do to prevent governments using them to spread disinformation? The question is particularly pressing when the president of the country of origin of these social networks is one of the worst offenders in this regard, spreading alarm at home and prompting all kinds of volatility in the world economy?

This is a topic that tends to polarize debate, and in many cases is associated with authoritarianism and populism. As their name suggests, social networks were originally created to allow people to communicate with each other; instead of which powerful institutions and individuals have seized them as powerful propaganda tools.

Does the answer lie in analytics? Whoever sets up a platform must be responsible for what takes takes place on it. It is now relatively straightforward to monitor what takes place on social networks and to identify attempts at…