It followed recommendations by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and was covertly developed as a long-term strategy to encourage Cuban youths to revolt against the nation's government, fomenting a political spring.

[1][18] The initiative also appears to have had a surveillance dimension, allowing "a vast database about Cuban ZunZuneo subscribers, including gender, age, 'receptiveness' and 'political tendencies'" to be built, with the AP noting that such data could be used in the future for "political purposes".

[5] The developers aimed to use "non-controversial content", such as sports and music, to build up subscribers and to then introduce political messages through social bots to encourage dissent in an astroturfing initiative.

[25] Investigative journalist Jon Lee Anderson described the response from the United States as "bald-faced disingenuousness" and said that "there seems to be little doubt that ZunZuneo functioned as a secret intelligence operation aimed ultimately at subversion.

[27] Mark Hanson of the Washington Office on Latin America said that those who supported the project were "the ones to seek the regime change—they believe in initiatives to destabilize the [Cuban] government", describing ZunZuneo as "wasteful.

[17] Lars Schoultz in his book In Their Own Best Interest: A History of the U.S. Effort to Improve Latin Americans likened the ZunZuneo affair to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

[16] In his conclusion to his 2017 book We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves, John Cheney-Lippold writes that "As everything we do becomes datafied, everything we do becomes controllable", citing ZunZuneo as a "malicious" example of how governments can influence the public.