Al-Badr is a fictitious account of the Saudi Crown Prince to crackdown on dissidents and critics, a Twitter account, prompting a backlash from other Twitter users.
According to the international group Tasnim News Agency, quoting Saudi Leaks, a media investigation conducted by the account of “Tahqiq Fi Al-Balad” revealed that “Al-Badr” is a fake account of “Muhammad bin Salman”, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, on Twitter.
The study analyzed 3 million tweets and monitored all of Al-Badr’s 3.13 million followers, who were later identified as members of Al-Saud’s family or the family of Saudi officials such as “Al-Badr.” Badr al-Assaker, director of the Crown Prince’s office and secretary-general of the Musk Foundation, as well as Nawaf al-Maqairin, a close friend of the Saudi Crown Prince, Ahmad al-Tawayan, Azzam al-Dakhil, and Abdul Aziz al-Yusuf, are close associates of the Saudi king.
According to the “Research in the Country” account, Al-Badr account tracks and controls all tweets on the Twitter network and document pages and other items for families and government agencies.
This account follows the leaders of Saudi e-flies and the official pages of international missions and is interested in tweets praising the Saudi king and crown prince and his achievements.
It is worth noting that in December 2020, the Al-Ahd Al-Jadeed account announced that the Saudi Crown Prince spends 4 hours a day in the virtual world to monitor tweets and authors and make decisions through this monitoring.
Al-Ahd al-Jadeed also revealed that the Saudi Crown Prince sometimes uses the account of his adviser at the royal court, Saud al-Qahtani, to monitor tweets.
Account research concluded that Muhammad bin Salman may have another account through which to track Saudi opponents and critics.
Disclosure of investigations into the Saudi Crown Prince’s account’s investigation into fake account has provoked a backlash from many Twitter users, who saw the Saudi Crown Prince’s move as reflecting the reckless mindset of the Saudi administration and its inability to address issues.
The tweets ridiculed Mohammad bin Salman’s fake account by posting hashtags, which many Saudi opponents and activists also commented on.
