Calling BS on Netflix and their fake Cuba announcement

I’ve written a piece for PJ Media about Monday’s announcement by Netflix that they will be offering streaming TV service to Cubans. Here’s a taste:

The Netflix/Cuba Announcement: Pure Propaganda
The good PR for Netflix feeds the false narrative of progress that ends up harming Cubans.

On Monday morning, Netflix put out a press release announcing Cubans would now have access to their streaming TV service. The press release was heavy on puffery and promises, but light on details. Yet most of the press dutifully repeated the headline.

Some accounts did at least acknowledge that the actual audience for Netflix in Cuba is, well … limited.

You see, in order to watch Netflix you need a device and a broadband Internet connection capable of handling streaming video. In the U.S. one can walk into a McDonald’s restaurant with a basic smartphone and have access to such a connection. Many of the media stories about the Netflix announcement state that in Cuba it is estimated that only 5% of the citizens have access to the internet that you and I can view, a number that is almost certainly a gross overestimate when it comes to a potential audience for Netflix.

The 5% number stems from a Freedom House report that includes any kind of Internet access, including expensive, black market, and slow access.

Yet the International Telecommunications Union estimates that in 2014 there were about .04 fixed broadband subscriptions for every 100 inhabitants of Cuba. That’s not 5%, that’s less than half of 1%.

Cuba’s population is 11 million — that translates into a total universe of potential Netflix subscribers that is perhaps 44,000.

On the infrastructure end, Netflix notably has had its issues about bandwidth with U.S.-based Internet service providers, complaining that its users are often getting a “poor customer experience.” I wonder which of the Castro brothers Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will complain to when the handful of Cuban subscribers complain of slow speeds. Or will it be their henchman Comandante Ramiro Valdes who, as minister of communications and informatics, once said that the Internet “is a wild colt that needs to be tamed”?

Continue reading at PJ Media.