First, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority brought back up the social site that used to be called Twitter but is now called “X” after being down for five days. This happened after the Sindh High Court told the PTA to fully restore the social networking site “X” across the country.
Why Twitter Service was down in Pakistan?
Since the night of February 17, Twitter’s service in the country has been going down and back up on and off. Four days later, on February 20, service for X was restored in the country, but it was interrupted again soon after.
Also, top writers Zarar Khuhro, Amber Shamsi, and others had gone to the Sindh High Court through lawyer Abdul Moeez Jafrii to protest the five-day ban on the social media site X in the country.
The claimants’ lawyer told the court that the interior minister had said that there was no order to ban X, and the IT minister, Umar Saif, had said that the IT sector had been helped.
In addition, the Sindh High Court told the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to fully restore X (formerly Twitter) services across the whole country. It’s important to note that X had been down across the country for five days, with only random restarts in between.
The court told the PTA to get X’s services back up and running without any problems. The government has also asked the PTA and other parties to give a full answer at the next meeting. It stopped the PTA from blocking the internet, websites, X, and other social media sites without permission.
What are PTA Remarks About Twitter Services Shutdown?
In addition, the PTA wouldn’t say why the services of social media site X, which used to be called Twitter, were shut down in Pakistan. After being down since 10 p.m. on Saturday, the service started to come back up with some problems, but it stayed down the whole time with patches of repair.
People all over the country used platform X through VPN services, but opening the X site on their phones, laptops, and computers was very hard. However, the PTA did not make a public comment about the problem, keeping quiet even though concerns were growing about the repeated disruptions.
Is Twitter Services Down Today?
In reaction to the court’s orders, lawyers for both the central and Sindh governments asked for more time to figure out what to say. The court put off further proceedings on the case until March 5 and said it would keep a close eye on things to make sure its orders are followed. Because the court was worried about violating people’s rights, it told all the important organisations to make sure that internet services were restored across the country right away.
The Sindh High Court also said that people shouldn’t be denied access to the internet without a good reason. They suggested that if necessary, the speed of the internet could be slowed down instead of being turned off totally.
The court stressed how important it is for choices that affect public services to be open and accountable. “If this situation persists, the court should be informed at the next hearing,” the order stated.
X Services Down in Pakistan
Also, Twitter users, businesses, journalists, activists, and others who relied on the social network for contact and information sharing were relieved to be able to use it again. This brought much-needed calm and normalcy back to the country after five days of problems. It gave Pakistani people back their internet rights and access that had been taken away by the ban.
Finally, Pakistan’s five-day Twitter outage showed how important it is to change the rules, create a system, and involve a lot of different groups in making policy so that internet users’ rights are properly protected and online material is moderated legally. Court decisions and a possible deal between Twitter and the PTA were steps in the right direction.
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References For Researchers Interested in related Research
Darr, A. (2018). Role of courts in enforcing competition laws: a comparative analysis of India and Pakistan. Journal of Antitrust Enforcement, 7(1), 75–103.
Jamil, S. (2021). The rise of digital authoritarianism: Evolving threats to media and Internet freedoms in Pakistan. World of Media. Journal of Russian Media and Journalism Studies, 3(3), 5–33.
Lindesmith, L. C. (2020). Broad Blockade Antibody Responses in Human Volunteers after Immunization with a Multivalent Norovirus VLP Candidate Vaccine: Immunological Analyses from a Phase I Clinical Trial. PLOS Medicine, 12(3), e1001807.
Rooyen, V. (2020, March 1). Science communication and the nature of the social media audience: Breaking and spreading of science news on Twitter in the South African context. Scholar.sun.ac.za.
Tufekci, Z. (2021). Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. In Google Books. Yale University Press.
