Pakistan Army has reportedly approached Facebook to express its reservations after the social media giant removed “accounts linked to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR)” over their involvement in “inauthentic behaviour” and spamming on Monday.
According to reports aired by local TV channels, ISPR not only denied backing or employing the people behind the removed pages, accounts and groups but also questioned Facebook claims that the military was behind those accounts.
Media reports quoting source said that ISPR has expressed its reservations over the claims made by Facebook that ISPR was managing these accounts or had employed people to run these accounts.
ISPR also raised questions over Facebook’s act of removing accounts highlighting the Kashmir issue and supporting Pakistan’s armed forces’s struggle.
The military’s media wing also urged the social media giant to open its office in Pakistan for “better understanding of the situation” on ground.
Facebook had made the announcement on April 1 and had said that the 24 pages, 57 accounts and 7 groups removed on Facebook had more than 2.8 million followers.
“Today we removed 103 pages, Groups and accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour on Facebook and Instagram as part of a network that originated in Pakistan,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity, had said in a statement released on April 1, adding that they were linked to ISPR.