Internet censorship in Pakistan

Internet censorship in Pakistan refers to measures implemented by the government to regulated and restrict access to online content, including information transmitted through the internet and social media platforms .Such restrictions have periodically included the blocking of websites and social networking services. The most recent nationwide restriction involved a ban was on X (formerly Twitter) imposed around the time of the 2024 general elections; access to the platform was subsequently restored on 7 May 2025.

There have been significant instances of website access restriction in Pakistan, most notably when YouTube was banned/blocked from 2012 to 2016. Pakistan has asked a number of social media organisations to set up local offices within the country, but this is yet to happen.

Pakistan made global headlines in 2010 for blocking Facebook and other Web sites in response to a contest popularized on the social networking site to draw images of the prophet Muhammad. In general, Internet filtering in Pakistan remains both inconsistent and intermittent, with filtering primarily targeted at content deemed to be a threat to national security, pornography, homosexuality and at religious content considered blasphemous. However, the present banning of Twitter is politically motivated.

In 2019, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecom was informed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) that 900,000 URLs were blocked in Pakistan for "reasons such as carrying blasphemous and pornographic content and/or sentiments against the state, judiciary or the armed forces." In February 2023, Wikipedia was banned by the PTA for two days over alleged blasphemous content.

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