Stanford University exposes India for operating an Anti-Pakistan network on Twitter

Preamble

#Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), an internet watchdog has called India out for spreading propaganda against Pakistan globally.

“#ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) has raised an awareness with regards to an #astonishing network of 4000-strong highly qualified #Information Warfare specialists during the past decade through a carefully crafted internship program that is directly run by #ISI,” the SIO research quotes one of the accounts as saying.

It further points out that the Twitter network’s content supports the Chinar Corps’ goals by “praising the work of the Indian Army in India-occupied Kashmir” and that the corps’ official account, @ChinarcorpsIA, is the network’s seventh-most-mentioned or retweeted account.

Image: Tactics behind pro-India Twitter campaign against Pak Army revealed

Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) described

In a recent study, SIO said that on August 24, 2022, #Twitter gave the Twitter Moderation Research Consortium (TMRC) around 15 sets of data about information operations that it had found and taken down from its site.

One of the sets of data had 1,198 tweets about India and Pakistan. Because of a violation of Twitter’s Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy, the service temporarily does disable. Twitter said that the data came from India.

In a paper titled ‘My Heart Belongs to Kashmir’ An Analysis of a Pro-Indian Army Covert Influence Ope­ration on Twitter, released on Wednesday, SIO revealed the tactics that this network employed, the narratives it was promoting, and the possible links the network had to the Chinar Corps — a branch of the Indian army that operates in occupied Kashmir.

SIO’s investigation found that most of these accounts were from Kashmir and often said they were based in #IIOJK. Their profile pictures came from a website that sells stock photos.

Prior to Twitter suspending “at least half of the network” in March 2022 for breaching their Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy, the network was at its most active. Twitter claimed that India was the network’s presumed place of origin.