The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) informed the Sindh High Court on Tuesday that it has blocked over 1.25 million URLs due to objectionable content. This action follows a petition filed regarding inappropriate material uploaded on social media platforms.
According to the regulator’s report to the SHC, out of the 1,253,522 blocked URLs, the reasons for the bans were as follows: 988,659 were due to indecent and immoral content, 90,980 for content deemed offensive to Islam, 84,130 for content related to national security and defense, 52,787 for spreading sectarianism and hate speech, 10,363 for defamation and impersonation, 10,252 for being proxies, 9,366 for various miscellaneous reasons, and 6,985 URLs for contempt of court.
Breaking down the blocked URLs by platform, the PTA noted that 139,415 were Facebook links, 98,597 were from TikTok, 50,975 from YouTube, 18,123 from Instagram, 5,184 from SnackVideo, 4,285 from Bigo and Linkee, and 550 from Dailymotion. Additionally, 887,435 URLs were categorized as miscellaneous.
The regulator informed the SHC that it currently maintains records of approximately 1.34 million URLs. Of these, over 71,722 remain accessible, while requests to block 16,122 URLs were denied.
The PTA raised concerns about the maintainability of the petition, asserting that the petitioners did not approach the authority to address their grievances before filing the petition. Additionally, the PTA stated that despite their request, the petitioners failed to provide the exact URLs of objectionable content. The hearing was postponed until May 15 at the request of the deputy attorney general, who sought more time to obtain instructions from other respondents, including zonal directors and the director of FIA’s cybercrime wing, to submit their comments.
In an earlier session, the SHC had instructed the PTA to enforce relevant laws and regulations to prevent and remove objectionable content from social media platforms.
