During the last two years, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked over 800,000 websites and web pages that had inappropriate and objectionable content.
The statistics came into light when a PTA official informed the Senate Standing Committee on IT & Telecom last week.
According to an official document from PTA, available to ProPakistani, the action was taken under the Prevention from Electronic Crime Act (PECA), 2016.
The blocked sites, pages and video channels contained anti-state, anti-judiciary, blasphemous, defamatory, pornographic, proxy or sectarian/hate speech.
The objectionable content was mostly found on Facebook, Twitter, Dailymotion, YouTube and other miscellaneous websites.
In the last two years, PTA blocked 769,870 pornographic sites or pages, and 5,064 websites or web pages with anti-state content and 4,528 with anti-judiciary content.
Progress Google, Facebook and Twitter
PTA informed the Senate that on the orders of Islamabad High Court, the authority has conducted meetings with representatives of Google, Facebook and Twitter so as to streamline the blocking procedure of objectionable content.
The Senate Committee was told that there has been significant progress in the process and a majority of PTA’s complaints are being entertained.
Both YouTube and Twitter have provided PTA with dedicated portal access for lodging complaints directly.
Blocking Procedure
PTA has developed an e-portal through which the stakeholder organizations can lodge complaints. There are 30 federal and provincial government organizations that are counted as stakeholders and have the direct access to the portal to register complaints.
The general public can lodge complaints via the PTA’s email address – [email protected].
Blocked Websites
| Categories | Dailymotion | Misc. | YouTube | Total | ||
| Anti-state | 47 | 3345 | 884 | 719 | 69 | 5064 |
| Anti-judiciary | 24 | 3086 | 52 | 1296 | 70 | 4528 |
| Blasphemy | 212 | 8299 | 18296 | 2612 | 5070 | 34489 |
| Defamatory/Impersonation | 12 | 524 | 121 | 167 | 62 | 886 |
| Miscellaneous | 3 | 350 | 2270 | 15 | 1015 | 3653 |
| Pornography | 25 | 407 | 768610 | 811 | 17 | 769870 |
| Proxy | – | 9 | 10177 | 1 | 9 | 10196 |
| Sectarian/Hate Speech | 3 | 1348 | 245 | 160 | 85 | 1841 |
| Total | 326 | 17368 | 800675 | 5781 | 6397 | 830527 |
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