On Monday, the social networking platform X, which was previously known as Twitter, had disruptions to its services for the third day in a row in Pakistan.
The outage was detected a little after 10:30 am and lasted until noon, according to Downdetector. After 12:24 p.m., services were resumed, but after 1 p.m., they were interrupted once more.
The most afflicted areas, according to data compiled by Downdetector, a tracking tool for outages, were Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Gujranwala, among other places.
Due to claims of election tampering, X facilities have been unavailable for disruption for the third day in a row.
Due to “escalating unrest and rallies over accusations of fraud in elections, following a high-level resigning and public confession of vote rigging by a senior election official,” internet watchdog Netblocks announced on Saturday that X was being disrupted countrywide.
The outage was discovered during the dramatic press conference in which ex Rawalpindi commissioner Liaqat Ali Chattha accused Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa and the Election Commission of Pakistan of being involved in the “rigging” of the results. Both the top judge and the electoral watchdog refuted Chattha’s accusations.
The candidates who were “losing” the elections, according to Chattha, “were made to win,” and “an organized manner at some offices” was still being used to defend the rigged results.
X was blocked in Pakistan for a full day, according to Netblocks’ measurements, which it released on Sunday. The company described the restriction as “the newest and longest in an array of nation-scale censorship of the internet measures imposed by officials as reports of fraud in elections emerge.”
Usama Khilji, a digital rights campaigner, pointed out on Sunday that many people could only access X through specific virtual private networks (VPNs). “Most users are complaining that the internet is slow and that their VPNs are also blocked,” he continued.
Khilji stated that caretaker IT Minister Umar Saif was “using a VPN to tweet regarding two key IT projects in Pakistan as Twitter/X continues blocked for a third day” in response to a post the minister made today.
Shutting down the internet or other social media platforms, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), “bleeds online businesses and commerce and contributes to the misery of an already unstable and struggling economy.”
Additionally, it violates people’s freedoms of expression, knowledge, and democratic decision-making. It stated, “This practice ought to end right away.
Regarding the service interruption, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has not released any information thus far. When approached, the authority advised that the interior ministry be contacted with the question.
Digital rights advocate Nighad Dad stated, “You cannot shut down an entire network and implement a blanket ban,” in an interview with Dawn.com. This blatantly violates people’s fundamental rights.
Dad went on to say that such broad prohibitions would simply serve to spread misinformation and instability in the political environment at the moment.
The activist continued, “The public deserves transparency, regardless of the cause of the outage.”
SOURCE: DAWN NEWS
