The opposition Move Forward Party (MFP) accused the military of using information operations (IOs) to instigate conflict among people via the royally initiated Jit-arsa (spirit of volunteering) training programme.
Deputy Defence Minister Gen Chaichan Changmongkol denied that the military had wanted to do harm to people. Meanwhile, the social media accounts on the Jit-arsa training programme were openly used to promote the work of the army.
He said this in response to the debate on the fourth day of a no-confidence debate against the government on Friday.
During the debate, Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, a Bangkok MP for the MFP, accused Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, in his capacity as defence minister, of failing to implement 12 policy pledges declared to parliament, particularly a promise to prevent cyber crime and reduce its social impact.
Mr Nattacha also claimed that the prime minister had exploited budgets and state personnel to create hatred. He also accused the prime minister of repeatedly lying that there had been no IOs instigated by the government.
Mr Nattacha then played a video clip of what he claimed to be an online meeting at the 21st Military Circle.
He claimed that during the meeting, military personnel were instructed to counter critics of the military.
He then played another video clip of a military meeting on Feb 17 of last year -- four days before the Constitutional Court ruled to dissolve the Future Forward Party.
Mr Nattacha said the meeting discussed preparations in case the party was disbanded.
He also claimed there was a leaked document about the military's IO a few months ago. He said the document was about a training programme of the Jit-arsa school.
Under the programme, there were two teams -- a "white team", which engaged in public relations promoting royal work and a "dark team", which took aim at critics, Mr Nattacha claimed.
He went on to say that the document showed that instructions were given via Twitter and Messenger. It also showed that there were about 54,800 user accounts related to the IOs under the supervision of 19 military units, Mr Nattacha said.
He claimed that the military repeatedly posted the same message hundreds of times to create fake information, prompting Twitter to suspend 926 accounts which were alleged to be linked with the Thai military's IOs late last year.
Responding to the accusations, Gen Chaichan denied that the military had wanted to do harm to people. But social media has been awash with false information and hate speech that has caused divisions and affected peace and order.
Gen Chaichan said the royally initiated Jit-arsa training programme was intended to provide soldiers with proper knowledge about technological development.
"The user accounts in question are above board and transparent. There was no intention to harm anyone. You were trying to connect things together as if you were more knowledgeable than the military,'' Gen Chaichan said.
He also dismissed the MP's reference to the "white and dark" teams.