INDIA, PAKISTAN TECH WAR HITS FB, TWITTER

Social media sites accused of bias for suspending accounts

PAKISTANI social media campaigner Hanzala Tayyap leads about 300 ultra-nationalist cyber warriors fighting an Internet war with arch-foe India, in a battle that is increasingly sucking in global technology giants such as Twitter and Facebook.

Hanzala, 24, spends his days on Facebook and encrypted WhatsApp chatrooms organising members of his Pakistan Cyber Force group to promote anti-India content and make it go viral, including on Twitter where he has more than 50,000 followers.

That ranges from highlighting alleged Indian human rights abuses to lionising insurgents battling security forces in Kashmir.

Hanzala’s job became harder on Monday when the Pakistan Cyber Force’s Facebook account

was taken down, one of 103 Pakistani accounts the social media giant said it had deleted because of “inauthentic behaviour” and spamming. Some Indian nationalist accounts have also been suspended in recent weeks.

Portraying himself as an online combatant defending Pakistan from India’s attempts to destabilise his country, Hanzala plans to continue playing his role in the broader information war between the nuclear-armed foes.

“We are countering the Indian narrative through social media, we are countering the enemies of Pakistan,” said Hanzala.

With a combined population of 1.5 billion, India and Pakistan are hot growth markets for Facebook and Twitter, say analysts.

But with many rival ultra-nationalist and extremist groups in the region using Facebook and Twitter platforms to advance their political agenda, both companies face accusations of bias whenever they suspend accounts.

Facebook has been buffeted by controversies across the globe in recent years.

Four Facebook and more than 20 Twitter accounts belonging to members of the Pakistan Cyber Force have been shuttered in the past two months, according to Hanzala, who is angry at Twitter for shutting down his previous personal account in 2016.

A Twitter spokesman said: “We believe in impartiality and do not take actions based on political viewpoints.”

A Facebook spokesman said the company did not remove the Pakistani accounts because of Indian government pressure, but because people behind them coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves.