PTA Issues New Rules For the Regulation of Social Media

To curb unlawful and immoral content from propagating in Pakistan, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA)  under the Ministry of IT has issued the notification of new rules and regulations. These sets  of rules are termed as ‘Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Content’.

PTA Issues New Rules For the Regulation of Social Media

The new rules strictly prohibits the general public from sharing any obscene content related to religion, Defense of Pakistan and any public order along with any other vulgar content. The social media firms would also remove all those things from their respective platforms that are hurting the sentiments on Pakistani public or disrespecting the state apparatus itself.

Furthermore, the new rules put a ban on the sharing of content related to blasphemy and any content that is arbitrary to the governmental obligations. Every social media platform would also provide community guidelines.

According to the rules, no person can upload any comment or sentiment against any other individual and will not interfere in any individual’s personal matter. Any such content will be blocked that is influencing the young people of Pakistan in a negative manner. No person would be allowed to talk against the Armed Forces and Defense institutions on any social media platform. Content filled with hatred and animosity would also be discarded from the social media platforms. Also, any content related to extremism, terrorism and vulgarity would be now be allowed to spread on social media.

In addition to that, it is must for every social media company that has more than 500,000 subscribers to get registered with PTA. According to the PTA,

A deadline of 9 months has been given to each social media company to establish their offices in Pakistan and comply with the new rules. It would take a total of 18 months for social media companies to build their data base servers in the country.

In any case, there must strict adherence to these rules and in case of non-compliance, stringent actions would be taken against the convicts.

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