The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Ministry insists it will no longer intervene in social media operations in a bid to comply with National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) policy.
The ICT Ministry will only ask the public to avoid sending or texting provocative messages and content, said Pol Gen Pisit Pao-in, an adviser to the ICT permanent secretary.
The ministry scrapped its plan to meet executives of Facebook and Google in Singapore and Line executives in Japan at the weekend after finding many users tend to avoid texting provocative content using such services.
Pol Gen Pisit said the NCPO had no policy of blocking internet gateways or banning people from using social media such as Line, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as that would violate people's right to access the web and infringe on their privacy.
"The planned visit to the major social network sites has created a false public sentiment," he admitted.
Pol Gen Pisit said the ICT Ministry would keep track of social media to prevent people using them to spreading provocative statements on websites.
But the tracking will be in line with international law.
From May 22-26, the ICT Ministry blocked 219 webpages that were deemed a threat to the country.
Last Wednesday, a one-hour outage of Facebook sparked a public outcry against censorship, although the junta insisted it did not pull the plug on the service, instead blaming a technical glitch for the nationwide blackout.
The brief shutdown of Facebook coming only one day after the junta's announcement that it had set up a panel to examine internet traffic naturally prompted suspicions that the military had a hand in the incident.