By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A government minister accused the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on Monday of hiring foreign companies to orchestrate paid social media campaigns, spreading what he described as selective narratives and propaganda through fake accounts operated from abroad.
Tallal Chaudhry, the minister of state for interior, laid out the allegations in a news conference, presenting a video that he said drew on documents provided by social media platform X. He detailed an elaborate system involving auctions, foreign funding and ephemeral WhatsApp groups designed to evade detection. “The companies create fake accounts in the name of women and news agencies that are being operated from foreign countries,” Chaudhry said.
He described the operation as a coordinated effort financed by the PTI, the party led by the imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, which has frequently clashed with the current government over allegations of election rigging and political persecution. “The companies were hired through auction and paid via foreign funding [by PTI],” Chaudhry said. “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, he added, are managed by companies that “frequently change the accounts’ names as per the requirements.” Chaudhry outlined a process in which instructions for launching trends or hashtags were disseminated through temporary WhatsApp groups. “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,” he said. “The amount of money given for a trend or a tweet can’t be traced.”
Afterward, he said, the company would establish a new group and add different participants for the next assignment. The scale of the activity, according to Chaudhry, involved repetitive amplification. “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 asserted that the same networks were being used to promote content from militant and separatist groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Balochistan Liberation Army, as well as pro-Israel entities. “The accounts which make trends [for PTI] also create trends about the activities of TTP, BLA, and pro-Israel groups.”
Social media platforms, the state minister noted, had already intervened in some cases. “The social media platforms had taken action against some accounts as they were against their policies and guidelines.” Despite possessing extensive information on those involved, the government was opting for restraint rather than prosecution. “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,” Chaudhry said. “We are cautioning them not to be part of trends that are against the country for monetary gains.”
Fielding questions from reporters, Chaudhry addressed the financial underpinnings of the alleged scheme. “The payment is made in dollars and is transferred through [PTI’s] foreign funding,” he said in response to an inquiry about the investment’s scale and origins. “According to our analysis, Pakistanis are rarely involved in these trends.” When asked if the government had confronted the PTI directly, he replied: “No one wants to own it. They say it [the trends and hashtags] is organic and [real] people participate in it.” But, he countered, “We have provided evidence that real people don’t participate in it.”
On potential enforcement measures, Chaudhry highlighted obstacles posed by the platforms’ policies and international privacy laws. “Most of the accounts are fake,” he said. “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.” The government, he added, was engaging with the companies. “We have 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 said.
He drew parallels to global practices, noting that other nations had imposed restrictions to safeguard national interests. “These conditions prevail across the world,” he said. “Some countries in Europe ban or block social media platforms to protect their interests.” The allegations come amid heightened tensions between the government and the PTI, which has leveraged social media to mobilize supporters and challenge the ruling coalition. The PTI has not immediately responded to the minister’s claims, but party officials have previously dismissed similar accusations as attempts to stifle dissent.
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