On Sunday, Dec 17, 2023 in the late hours, suddenly the users all across Pakistan have started facing the issues accessing the social media sites. I too was facing same issues while trying to access youtube and twitter. So naturally, I opened the downdetector.pk to check if something is going on with these services here in Pakistan.
And Yes, there were many more other users who were complaining about these services not being accessible in Pakistan. On further research it came forward that there is some virtual gathering or ‘jalsa’ in other words is organized by PTI. So these services are being restricted to stop all those from reaching the people of Pakistan.
Specially a dawn.com’s article about interruption of social media, mentioned the Netblocks, an independent organization which monitors the internet and it blockage or filtering around the world. So Netblock also reported the outage of website like Youtube, X, Instagram and more. Also after seeing the pattern it has been reported that the outage was intentionally created one.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) normally orders such measures and then IPS and mobile operators block the services on their instructions. Now the question is, when a caretaker government is sitting in center and all the provinces are also being run by caretaker setups, who is instructing the PTA to get all these services blocked.
Whoever did this, is very afraid of PTI as well as the power of people of Pakistan. If this blockage would not have been ordered many people including me, did not had any idea about any virtual political rally or gathering going on in Pakistan. But by such measures, the elements who ordered it, are giving more attention to such events.
Now again, question still stands, how the caretaker setup can even order such measures against an existing political party, which even stands legal as of today.
But it is not even about a party. Now a days, the businesses and livelihoods of millions in Pakistan are connected to internet and social media. When you do such stunts on national level, you lose reputation in the international community as well as hurt your people too financially as well as in other ways. In today’s era right to communicate is basic necessity and anyone messing with it should be plain and simple punished.