X’d out

The month of February saw yet another controversial general election in Pakistan. A great number of allegations of misconduct and rigging were reported. Various protests were held and, most importantly, the after-effects of the elections led to random disruptions to social media access. It has nearly been three months since the sudden ban deprived Pakistani people of its full use. Strangely, many people, including senior elected officials, are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to tweet. As far as the reasons for the de-facto ban are concerned, they are rather difficult to understand. However, whatever the reasons for it may be, the ban has caused and is still causing immense damage to the country.

It could greatly curtail freedom of speech and expression as a significant number of people express their views on platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Unreliable access and random outages can also massively disrupt e-commerce, further weakening the already fragile economy. Pakistan cannot afford to ban any social media apps at this critical time when the country is grappling with multiple issues, particularly economic ones. The state must learn some lessons from the failure of past restrictions on leading social media apps.

Shehzad Ahmed Brohi

Larkana