Twitter banned in Pakistan !

[Son of Govinda]

Pakistan blocks Twitter because of material considered offensive to Islam - The Washington Post

ISLAMABAD — The chairman of Pakistan's telecommunications authority says the government has blocked the social networking website Twitter because of material considered offensive to Islam.

Mohammad Yaseen says the website was blocked on Sunday because Twitter refused to remove material related to a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.

Yaseen said Facebook agreed to address Pakistan's concerns but officials have not been able to get Twitter to do the same.

Officials from Facebook and Twitter could not immediately be reached for comment.

Pakistan blocked Facebook for about two weeks in 2010 because of a similar competition.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

[SPIEZ]

And something similar is being done by a man in India after his political party was criticized

 

[nrj]

Why ban the twitter ?

Those good guys have provided country specific funnels to filter every and any type of content

 

[Yusuf]

I think it may be more to do with them being shown the mirror.

 

[Galaxy]

If Pakistan want to block the sites offensive to Islam, it is better to ban the Internet.

They cannot stop anybody to Tweet. There are 200 Millions Tweeples. Twitter does allow materials to reported as offensive and has the ability to censor stuff. Extremely bad decision.

 

[nrj]

Maybe they can run to their Chinese friends & launch a state controlled website copy of twitter ?

 

[Son of Govinda]

If Pakistan want to block the sites offensive to Islam, it is better to ban the Internet.

They cannot stop anybody to Tweet. There are 200 Millions Tweeples. Twitter does allow materials to reported as offensive and has the ability to censor stuff. Extremely bad decision.

Iran moving ahead with plans for national intranet | Ars Technica

I reckon it's only a matter of time before Pakistan and every other backwards fundamentalist nation tries this.

 

[nrj]

Pakistan Blocks Twitter Over Blasphemous Content, Facebook Complies?

Another day, another example of a country making it harder for its people to use the web and some of its most effective channels of communication. There are reports coming in from Pakistan that it has become the latest country to ban the use of Twitter.

According to the blog Dawn, the chairman of Pakistan's telecommunications authority has today imposed the restriction because of blasphemous content: it reports that Chairman Mohammad Yaseen blocked the site today "because Twitter refused to remove material related to a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad." Facebook, apparently, has complied with the request, says the blog. Others are now starting to report the same circumstances, and below the break we have a screenshot of how accessing the site looks from one of our readers in Lahore.

Getting blocked in Pakistan is particularly ironic because the two, paired up, played a major role in one of the most important news events to be broken in recent history: the raid and demise of Osama bin Laden, which was tweeted by at least two people watching the raids as they happened in the mountains of the country.

This is a developing (and slightly confusing) story: just yesterday, about 12 hours ago, Senator Rehman Malik, of Pakistan's People Party, tweeted that nothing was getting blocked: "Dear all, I assure u that Twitter and FB will continue in our country and it will not be blocked. Pl do not believe in rumors," he wrote. We have contacted Twitter and Facebook for their responses to this story.

Update: more details coming in from Pakistan's Express Tribune: The request to block the site was made by the Ministry of Information and Technology, it says, citing the competition on Facebook. The ministry, apparently, made several requests to Twitter, which responded that it "cannot stop any individual doing anything of this nature on the website."

Directives to block the site were sent to ISPs in several parts of the country, including PTCL Broadband and Wi-Tribe. It also reports that Twitter is still accessible by mobile using secure browsers like Opera, as well as proxies and VPNs like Vtunnel. [original report continues]

This is not the first time that Twitter has been blocked in the country: a similar ban took place in 2010 for the same reason. That lasted for two weeks.

The move underscores how susceptible social networks remain to higher powers in government. And Pakistan is not the only country to pull something like this.

Sites like Facebook and Twitter are still officially forbidden in China (although millions use it anyway using VPNs — virtual private networks), with the bans often having strong political overtones around people expressing contary opinions. Developing countries with big populations represent some of the biggest potential growth opportunities for scale-oriented social networks — when they can get used.

Even developed countries like the UK have floated ideas about how to restrict the flow of information on social networks — this was something that came up last summer during the London riots and the role that some believed services like BlackBerry Messenger played in gangs getting organized to loot.

Report: Pakistan Blocks Twitter Over Blasphemous Content, Facebook Complies? | TechCrunch

 

[nrj]

Pakistan Unblocks Twitter After Eight-Hour Ban | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

 

[LurkerBaba]

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What was the point ?

 

[KS]

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What was the point ?

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