Twitter launched in 2006 but exploded in popularity by 2009, boasting over 58 million users globally.
Thats just the way it works.
And pointing that out isnt an attempt to paint the U.S. as uniquely fiendish in its international development efforts.
In this file photo, a person holds a banner of Che Guevara at the Peace Without Borders concert in Revolution Square in Havana, Cuba on Sept. 20, 2009.Photo: Javier Galeano (AP)
China does exactly the same thing with programs like the Belt and Road Initiative.
The program kicked off shortly after the December 2009 arrest of Alan Gross during the presidency of Barack Obama.
Gross received a 15-year sentence in Cuba but was released in a prisoner swap in late 2014.
Slide from a late 2010 presentation about how ZunZuneo had been performing in Cuba under U.S. government direction, released through FOIA.Image: USAID / Gizmodo
ZunZuneo was shut down in late 2012, though the exact circumstances about why remain unclear.
Ironic, of course.
Or, to put it more bluntly, the BBG was Americas biggest foreign propaganda arm.
Slide from a late 2010 presentation about plans for ZunZuneo in the coming year, released through FOIA.Screenshot: USAID
Today, visiting the web domain for Piramideo looks like any other desolate internet wasteland of spam.
But thanks to the Internet Archives Wayback Machine anyone can check out what the sitelooked like in 2014.
Or at least that was the idea on paper.
The 2014 website for a Cuban social network that essentially ran as a phone-tree texting service run by the U.S. government to inform Cubans of protests, whether they were real or not.Screenshot: Internet Archive / Wayback Machine
Critics alleged the service was spreading disinformation with the goal of stirring insurrection against Cuban authorities.
The U.S. is trying to create a climate to protest against the Cuban government.
So why didnt that work with Cuba for so many years, from roughly 1960 to 2015?
Why does it matter if ByteDance is beholden to the Chinese government?
Thats my understanding, Wray responded.
Lets just cross our fingers that whatever this is doesnt turn into a shooting war.
With the benefit of hindsight, its honestly a miracle we lived through the first Cold War withoutnuclear armageddon.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
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“Sowwy I made you dead.”
