JEDDAH: The Interior Ministry has warned that several social media websites are being used by extremists and criminals to mislead the country’s youth, a local publication reported on Wednesday.

In a lecture entitled “The impact of media on ideas and trends in society,” Col. Fahd Abdulaziz Al-Ghufaili, the ministry’s director for online security, stated the aim was to pit citizens against the government.

He delivered the address at Taif Technical College as part of an awareness program sponsored by the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation. “The other problem is that the majority of these accounts are false and managed from outside the Kingdom by the enemies of the country and people.

“They use thousands of accounts under false Saudi names to send more than 4 million negative messages via Twitter alone, not to mention the other social platforms,” he said.

He said that the abusive information is an attempt to target the security and stability of the Kingdom. “Such fabricated information can easily be detected by a person with common sense if time is taken to carefully analyze the information for lies and contradictions,” he said.

He said there was an attempt to create divisions in the community on tribal lines, and even on sporting issues. There were also attempts being made to declare some people non-believers, and spread content about atheism, witchcraft, pornography and drugs.

The ultimate aim was to weaken the resolve of young people, so that they become more susceptible to wrongdoing, rather than seeking proper information that would help them and fellow citizens, he said.