400 fake social media accounts being reported daily, PTA tells PAC

ISLAMABAD: Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday shared that 400 fake accounts are being reported on a daily basis in the country in a bid to quell disinformation campaigns in the country, ARY NEWS reported.

He shared these details before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting which was headed by dissident PTI leader Noor Alam Khan.

During the meeting, the PAC chairman asked the PTA chairman regarding their actions against fake accounts on social media. “One person is operating 2000 fake accounts and defaming the institutions from them,” he said.

The chairman PTA said that they report fake accounts and currently 400 accounts are being reported on a daily basis.

Responding to a query from Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed regarding the number of internet users in the country, the PTA chairman said that there are a total of 115 million internet users in the country of which 113 are using it with their mobile phones.

It is pertinent to mention here that recently, Twitter Inc estimated in a filing that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.

The social media company had 229 million users who were served advertising in the first quarter.

The disclosure came days after Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk, who has inked a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, tweeted that one of his priorities would be to remove “spam bots” from the platform.