Cuba has slammed Twitter for spreading rumors starting Jan. 2 that claimed leader Fidel Castro had died. The microblog is well known for its policy of not mediating content and confirmed to Mashable that this case was no exception.
State-controlled website Cubadebate blames Spanish Twitter user David Fernandez for starting the rumor -- although it says his account was spammed by a robot via an Italian server. The Cuban site further accuses the microblog of allowing Fidel Castro to become a trending topic, eventually becoming the world's number four trend and Spain's number two.
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Fernandez denied his responsibility to CNN, explaining that his mostly humorous string of tweets began after the topic was already trending. The offending tweet was not originally his and that he had retweeted someone.
"They should double-check their 'information' before blaming someone for no reason," Fernandez told CNN. "I wrote about that when the topic was already trending and my tweets were mostly jokes. I didn't start anything."
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Whether or not the @naroh account was penetrated by a robot, it is incredibly prolific, having sent more than 75,000 tweets. To put that in perspective, @Mashable has sent 44,000 tweets. Some of @naroh's tweets don't sound computer-generated, such as this one, in which he asks if Cuba's accusations can qualify him as a "twitstar."
Cuba ya me ha echado la culpa de matar a Fidel Castro en Twitter. ¿Ya me puedo considerar una twitstar?
— @Naroh - David Fdez (@Naroh) January 4, 2012
Cuba is not the first government to lash out at Twitter for content hosted on its site. U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman asked the site to block the Taliban, and the U.S. State Department is reportedly concerned over Somali militants' use of the site.
What do you think? Is Twitter responsible for the content it hosts? Should the site monitor rumors or let them flow?
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PeterPhoto
This story originally published on Mashable here.
