ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked over 900,000 web URLs on the internet related to pornographic, anti-state and blasphemous content.
Section 37 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 gives the internet regulatory authority absolute power to block and remove online content which is objectionable.
The document issued by PTA gave related figures in detail, according to which, 11,538 URLs containing anti-state content, 6,035 URLs containing anti-judiciary content, 50,331 URLs containing blasphemous content, 831,362 URLs containing pornographic content and 9,127 URLs containing hate speech were blocked by the internet regulatory authority.
PTA said that it regularly warns telecom license holders to keep a strict check and immediately delete, remove or blacklist objectionable content.
However, objectionable content on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram can’t be blocked, it must be deleted from its source by the uploader or the social media company itself. In past, the government has moved numerous requests, asking Twitter and Facebook to take down several anti-state accounts.