FB assisting Pakistan in blocking content

ISLAMABAD: After hectic efforts by Islamabad to bring them on negotiation table, Facebook team is visiting Pakistan for discussing venues of cooperation on filtering and blocking content on one of the largest social media networking site being used in the country, The News has learnt.

“The Facebook team is currently visiting Pakistan in the aftermath of lot of persuasion from Islamabad to cooperate on links/content blocking in the country,” official sources confirmed to The News here on Wednesday night.

Pakistan has been asking the Facebook team to block all contents on such links uploaded at FB pages which falls into the violation of Electronic Crimes Act approved by the parliament and became law of the land.

When contacted to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s Director General (DG) Internet Web Nisar Ahmed and inquired him about the FB team visit to Pakistan, he confirmed that the FB team was visiting Pakistan as they made a lot of efforts to pursue them for sitting on the table and ensure blocking of contents which fell into the category of violation of electric crime act in Pakistan.

“Everything which is unlawful in Pakistan should be filtered for their users in Pakistan,” he added. He said that there were about 35 million users of FB so they must respect the law of the land as they were making a lot of money.

However, independent activists in support of free social media argued that the government might use blockage for curtailing freedom of speech because social media had become an effective tool for discussing key issues facing confronting this country at a time when censorship is on rise for many other outfits.