New Delhi: A Facebook investigation has concluded that a number of Pakistani social media pages that posted “aggressive anti-India rhetoric” were operated by employees of the Pakistani Army’s media wing who “attempted to conceal their identities”.
Following the investigation, Facebook, said on 1 April, that it took down 103 of these “pages, groups and accounts” that were operated by the staff of the military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) department.
The 103 include “24 pages across Facebook and Instagram, 57 Facebook accounts, seven groups and 15 Instagram accounts”.
Although names and content of all 103 now-removed pages have not been publicly listed, Facebook has shared the details with American think-tank Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), which released a summary of the content and impact of these Facebook pages.
According to DFRLab’s summary, published on Medium, an online publishing site, these pages had an “aggressively anti-Indian rhetoric”, “inflamed tensions with India”, “pushed Pakistan’s claims over Kashmir and praised the (Pakistan) army”, especially the head of ISPR, Major General Asif Ghafoor.
Also read: Around 200 pro-BJP pages removed in Facebook’s largest purge in India
Posts demonised India
While DFRLab says there is “insufficient” publicly available evidence to “fully prove” that ISPR employees are behind these pages, it, however, notes that “their tone strongly supported Pakistan and attacked India, consistent with ISPR’s behaviour”.
According to DFRLab, the content “demonised India” and used “extreme rhetoric to stigmatise India and the Indian armed forces”.
Some of the posts flagged include one that has an alleged quote from Ghafoor targeting Indian forces saying, “We will shut these monkeys…”
Another such post in Urdu reads, “Today is the 6th death anniversary of M.M. Alam, who destroyed 5 Indian jets within 1 minute. Who has the courage to hamper our flight?…”
The posts especially praised Ghafoor, said DFRLab. One such post reads, “With concrete action on ground, Pakistan won the battle of perception/narratives… Thanks, DG ISPR”.
Ben Nimmo, an analyst and senior fellow for Information Defence at the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, has tweeted that this Pakistani network was a “big and long-lasting network” with the oldest page dating back to 2011.
According to Facebook, around 2.8 million accounts followed these pages and may have been influenced by the content.
Nimmo, however, said that the Pakistani operation had “mixed success” with some of its content receiving poor user engagement.
This network of Pakistani operatives “stayed under the radar a long time and built up a lot of followers, but individual posts only had a patchy impact”, Nimmo tweeted.
Also read: Mark Zuckerberg’s calls for regulation could possibly backfire on Facebook
Facebook in touch with Pakistan PM
Facebook, however, has not detailed how it decided that these pages were linked to ISPR employees. Its cybersecurity head Nathaniel Gleicher, though, had told Dawn, an English daily in Pakistan, that it established a connection between these now-removed pages and ISPR employees “…when we [Facebook] see someone operating one of these fake accounts, and then they log into their own account”.
Gleicher told Dawn that Facebook is now in touch with the Pakistan “Prime Minister’s Office” over the issue.
Dawn was among the rare Pakistani media entities to report or comment on the Facebook action.
Neither ISPR nor its head Maj. Gen. Ghafoor appears to have addressed the allegation either. In its report, Dawn says it has reached out to ISPR for a comment but appears to have no response.
Facebook, however, has reiterated the reason it removed the pages was not their content but user behaviour.
“We’re taking down these pages and accounts based on their behaviour, not the content they posted,” it said in its statement. “The people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action”.
Pakistan Army is one of the finest army in the world who has not won a single war in its lifetime.
It is said that monkeys were father of men. Therefore DG ISPR has admitted that we are their fathers. In our part of world good sons respect their father. It is high time these no good sons improve their behaviour. Otherwise they should remember what Hanuman ji did to citadel of Ravana.