By Saad Al-Quwai’ee
Some countries around the world are using social media websites, especially Twitter, to wage an electronic war against the Kingdom with a view to damaging our reputation.
It was announced at the security and information conference organized by the Naif Academy for National Security in late 2015 that there were around 6,000 Twitter accounts with the sole purpose of attacking the Kingdom. Furthermore, there were around 4,000 Twitter accounts whose job was to retweet whatever appeared in the 6,000 accounts. The main objective of all these accounts is to sow sedition and destabilize the Kingdom.
What is worse is that the number of such accounts reached around 10,000 in 2016. There are hundreds of fake accounts that are run by the same groups that operate the 10,000 accounts. It is an electronic war in the full sense of the word. All these accounts try to influence and sway public opinion. There is no doubt that the people who run these accounts belong to the intelligence agencies of certain hostile countries.
Our enemies think that by spewing venom through hashtags they are able to sow sedition and destabilize our security. The fake accounts can be divided into three types: accounts whose sole job is to retweet, accounts targeting public opinion and accounts that take part in hot social issues related to the Kingdom. The second type of account posts news reports to agitate public opinion.
Each and every member of the public should fight these fake accounts on social media. Each one of us should be aware of these accounts and we should all work together to protect our country and ensure that its reputation remains positive.
