The closure of social media site ‘X’, formerly Twitter, in Pakistan has been characterized by cybersecurity experts and digital rights groups as a “blatant violation” of civil liberties, threatening to spread misinformation throughout the country.
The UK-based Internet watchdog Netblocks acknowledged on Saturday that there had been a “national-scale” interruption of X, which started as a result of demonstrations by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party of former prime minister Imran Khan, and other parties against what they claimed was election manipulation on February 8.
On Sunday morning, access to the platform was briefly restored before being restricted once more. Even yet, it’s unclear what caused the circumstance.
Civil rights are being blatantly violated by this, Leading Pakistani digital rights advocate and attorney Nighat Dad stated, “It’s not good for democracy,” and that closing down the Internet or any one social media site will not help address the problems of security or misinformation.
Malahat Obaid, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority’s (PTA) director of public relations, advised contacting the interior ministry to inquire about the situation.
Following a statewide mobile service outage and delays in voting results, Pakistan’s indecisive general election last week was tainted by allegations of election manipulation that alarmed human rights organizations and international governments.
The X outage occurred after Khan’s PTI and other parties staged nationwide protests against suspected election fraud.
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