ISLAMABAD – In a first, Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR)Director-General Maj General Asif Ghafoor hinted that the securityestablishment is keeping tabs on social media and monitoring “anti-state”accounts.

“We have the capability to monitor it [social media],” he said at a pressbriefing on Monday.

On a slideshow, he put up an image of a social media account showing how itwas linked to several other accounts. He said that this account, whosepicture was kept blank, had a habit of tweeting against the armed forcesand the state. “Look who retweeted this account, and we know who thesepeople are,” he said. “We understand the whole network.”

The DG said that from January to May 2018 the number of anti-states trollaccounts operating domestically had gone up from 2,000 to 3,000. During thesame period, the number of anti-state accounts overseas had reached over10,000. “It shows how social media is being used to create ‘ripples’ in thecounty,” he said.

As long as these accounts target us personally, we practice restraint, hesaid. But when it comes to the state, we share this information with therelevant authorities and work on it, he added. These people, whose profileshave been blanked out, retweet anti-state tweets and encourage them.

We have to stay united and have to defeat them, he went on to say. Thissocial media is not a threat as of now but countries that have control overthis menace, they have done it by spreading awareness.

Ghafoor said that images that usually pop up on social media are not true.