Ceasefire fails online
The five-day conflict left more than 40 people dead and drove more than 300,000 from their homes.
It also kicked off a disinformation blitz as Thai and Cambodian partisans alike sought to boost the narrative that the other was to blame. Thai officials recorded more than 500 million instances of online attacks in recent days, government spokesperson Jirayu Huangsab said on Wednesday.
These included spamming reports to online platforms and distributed denial of service attacks – halting access to a website by overloading its servers with traffic.
'It's a psychological war,' Cambodian government spokesman Pen Bona said.
'There's a lot of fake news and it wouldn't be strange if it came from social media users, but even official Thai media outlets themselves publish a lot of fake news.'
Freshly created 'avatar' accounts have targeted popular users or media accounts in Thailand. On July 24, a Facebook post by suspended Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra condemning Cambodia's use of force was bombarded with 16,000 comments, many of them repeating the same message in English: 'Queen of drama in Thailand'.
Government spokesman Jirayu said the attacks were aimed at 'sowing division among Thais'.
Similarly, Cambodian government Spokesman Pen Bona said fake news from Thailand aimed to divide Cambodia.
Bot accounts have also published and shared disinformation, adding to the confusion.
Other posts, including one shared by the verified page of Cambodian Secretary of State Vengsrun Kuoch, claimed Thai forces had used chemical weapons. The photo in the post in fact shows an aircraft dropping fire retardants during the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025.
AFP contacted Vengsrun Kuoch for comment but did not receive a reply. — AFP
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