Minister of State for Interior Tallal Chaudhry on Monday said the PTI hired “foreign companies” to run paid hashtags and social media trends to disseminate “selective narratives and propaganda”.
“The companies create fake accounts in the name of women and news agencies that are being operated from foreign countries,” said the minister while addressing the media in Islamabad.
Chaudhry also showed a video, saying all evidence in the video was taken from “documents provided by X” (formerly Twitter).
Briefing on the entire mechanism of the operation, he said, “The companies were hired through auction and paid via foreign funding [by PTI]. These companies then create social media accounts, which are mostly operated outside Pakistan in countries that are considered our enemies. The account users [handlers who operate the accounts] are neither PTI members nor people from Pakistan.”
The accounts were owned by companies that “frequently change the accounts’ names as per the requirements,” he added.
He added that a company made a WhatsApp group to share instructions for a trend and then deleted it to prevent the instructions from being traced to various accounts operated in different countries. “The amount of money given for a trend or a tweet can’t be traced,” he said.
Later, the company created a new WhatsApp group, and new people were added for the task.
“The accounts retweet a message from 50 to 500 times, while the value of a tweet can be Rs50, Rs100, 10 cents or 2 cents,” he added.
“The accounts which make trends [for PTI] also create trends about the activities of TTP, BLA, and pro-Israel groups.”
He added that the social media platforms had taken action against some accounts as they were against their policies and guidelines.
“We have a lot of information about the people who are involved in it, but we don’t want to initiate criminal cases or legal proceedings against them. We are cautioning them not to be part of trends that are against the country for monetary gains.”
Responding to a question about the amount and source of investment, he said, “The payment is made in dollars and is transferred through [PTI’s] foreign funding. According to our analysis, Pakistanis are rarely involved in these trends.”
In response to another question about contacting PTI on the matter, the minister said, “No one wants to own it. They say it [the trends and hashtags] is organic and [real] people participate in it.”
However, he said, “We have provided evidence that real people don’t participate in it.”
On a question about action against the companies and social media accounts, he said, “Most of the accounts are fake. Real accounts are rarely involved in it. Social media platforms don’t provide IP addresses of the accounts due to privacy laws, nor do they provide details of account holders.”
He further said that the government had taken the social media platforms “on board” to take action against the accounts and would “try to write to the countries from which these accounts have been operated.”
Chaudhry referenced other countries, saying, “These conditions prevail across the world. Some countries in Europe ban or block social media platforms to protect their interests.”
