Beware of social media ills: Guv

Hyderabad: “These days, one of the most important threats is cyber warfare or cyber threat which is not new and existed even before,” said Governor ESL Narasimhan while addressing a team of officers and faculty members of National Defence College who called on him at Raj Bhavan on Thursday, as part of their visit to Telangana State under “National Security and Strategic Studies” training programme at the National Defence College, New Delhi.

The Governor said, “Social media is creating panic and rumour-mongering among people and it is doing more harm than good to the society and people should be cautious while using it. Threats come in the shape of disruption, sabotage and subversion and in the olden days it was easy to trace as human element was involved. Because of the present digital world, it has become difficult to find origin of such threats as there is no human intervention and the spread is far and wide. These days, only wars of low intensity will be fought as no country would want to fritter away their precious human resources.”

The Governor also added, “In the digital world human aspect cannot be forgotten and technology can never be a substitute for human intelligence. A computer can reproduce only what a human will input similarly a robot serving in a hotel cannot make any difference between a normal customer and a terrorist. With e-invitations, e-greetings etc. social media has literally taken away the human touch and human element from the society and said the fine line between truth and untruth is missing and negativity in society is more dangerous and social values should be brought back in the society.”