Pakistani Public Laments PTA’s Decision to Block Wikipedia

In the past, Pakistan has restricted websites and other platforms due to sacrilegious content.  From 2012 until 2016, YouTube was restricted in the country due to “objectionable” videos. The popular video-sharing app TikTok had been banned multiple times in recent years due to “indecent” and “immoral” material. Now, recently, the general public has lamented the Pakistani telecom regulator’s (PTA) decision to block Wikipedia services, arguing that the move could restrict access to information.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) “degraded” Wikipedia in the country for 48 hours on February 1 for failing to remove “sacrilegious content” and threatened to completely block the website if the online encyclopedia did not comply with the directives.

The Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects are no longer accessible to users in Pakistan as of 5th February. The regulator stated that the website had neither responded to its inquiries nor removed the objectionable content. On social media, Pakistanis criticized the ban that has prevented more than 230 million people from viewing over 6 million articles. In this right, a digital rights activist said,

 There must be no legal avenue to block entire platforms like Wikipedia. This violates Pakistanis’ right to information and education, is disproportionate, and continues a ridiculous cycle of censorship.

In the absence of the PTA chairperson, he also questioned the clarity of the “sacrilegious content” and the legal mandate for action.

Attorney Taimur Malik urged the regulator and government to examine the decision instantly. The decision, according to Malik, was “regressive and destructive to Pakistan’s worldwide image” and demonstrated “a lack of knowledge of how crowdsourced/edited internet information platforms function.” Wikipedia is a free, crowdsourced encyclopedia, meaning anybody can create and modify articles.

In an interesting parallel, Aatif Awan, the founder of a Pakistan-focused venture fund, compared the banning of all of Wikipedia due to sacrilegious content in the information age to the closing of all libraries and bookstores due to a sacrilegious books in the pre-internet era.

Wikimedia encourages access to be restored.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, stated that the restriction will deny Pakistanis access to “the largest repository of free knowledge.” It is stated that English Wikipedia obtains more than 50 million page visits per month. The online platform defended its editing policies by stating, “Wikipedia is produced by approximately 300,000 volunteer editors” who have developed “rigorous editorial criteria that require stringent citations and references to verifiable sources of information.” The foundation explained that it “does not determine what content is included on Wikipedia” and that the information is extracted from secondary sources. The platform requested the Pakistani government and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to restore access to Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in the nation.

Check out? Chairman PTA Appointment: Government Test Case for Meritocracy