Pakistan to ban all social media platforms for 6 days to curb ‘hate material’

Islamabad:

After successfully blocking X, formerly Twitter, for over four months, the Pakistani government is now set to ban all social media platforms – YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok – for six days from the 13th to July 18, citing the need to control “hateful material” during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz’s cabinet committee on law and order has recommended banning all social media platforms – YouTube, X, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, among others – during 6 to 11 Muharram (13 to 18 July) in Punjab, a province with over 120 million people, to “control hate material and misinformation to prevent sectarian violence”, according to a Punjab government notification issued here on Thursday evening.

Maryam Nawaz’s government in Punjab has asked her uncle Shehbaz Sharif’s government at the Center to notify the suspension of all social media platforms on the internet for six days (July 13-18).

The Chief of the Pakistan Army, Gen Asim Munir, has already declared social networks as “vicious media” and highlighted the need to combat what he called “digital terrorism”.

Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, who also holds the foreign minister’s portfolio, recently called for a complete ban on social media.

The Shehbaz government closed the power.

Both the military and the government have received backlash on social media since the ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan through a motion of no confidence in April 2022.

The government has since arrested dozens of social media activists from Khan’s party.

(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)