Twitter Suspends Accounts of Raul Castro, Cuban Media

(Bloomberg) -- Twitter blocked the accounts of Cuban communist leader Raul Castro, the country’s Ministry of Communications, and the main Cuban media outlets Wednesday.

@Cubadebate, @Granma_Digital, @MesaRedondaCuba, @RadioRebelde, @DominioCuba, @Cubaperiodistas and @CanalCaribe are some of the accounts that have been suspended.

When asked for comment, a Twitter spokeswoman pointed Bloomberg to the company’s “platform manipulation” policy page, specifically a section that says users “can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.” That section states that “operating multiple accounts that interact with one another in order to inflate or manipulate the prominence of specific Tweets or accounts” is against Twitter’s policies.

The spokeswoman added that these types of policy violations are relayed directly to violating users, and that there is an appeals process. She declined to comment further.

Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez has been tweeting out developments, including the statement from the union for journalists in Cuba, UPEC. The union wrote on cubadebate.cu that Twitter’s “censorship” happened minutes before the president addressed the nation on state-run TV to talk about an economic response to U.S. sanctions.

To contact the reporters on this story: Maria Jose Valero in New York at mvalero3@bloomberg.net;Kurt Wagner in San Francisco at kwagner71@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Polina Noskova at pnoskova@bloomberg.net, Lauren Berry

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