For the fourth day in a row, X, formerly known as Twitter, has been stopped once more after briefly returning to service yesterday. The social networking app and website are once again not accessible to users.
Pakistani users have not been able to access Twitter since February 17. When Rawalpindi commissioner Liaqat Ali Chattha declared he would turn himself in to the police, the outage began.
This came after he acknowledged that the general elections that were held at the beginning of the month had been rigged. He acknowledged that tens of thousands of votes may change champions into losers in an instant. He said that he “personally supervised” the 70,000-vote manipulation.
As previously stated, the X suspension is already on its fourth day in Pakistan, making it the longest outage to ever occur there. The website Downdetector, which tracks outages, is once again displaying hundreds of reports of disruptions from throughout the nation. Users can’t load anything on their X account, including their feeds.
Concerns concerning possible political intentions have been expressed in relation to the decision to suspend X, prompting some to question the reasoning behind the action. Concerns have been raised in the interim about how the suspension may affect the nation’s freedom of speech and information access.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has opted to maintain its impartiality despite being a crucial regulatory organisation in charge of digital services and telecommunications. PTA sources have made it clear that the decision to suspend X in Pakistan was not influenced by the authority.
The Ministry of Interior, which has jurisdiction over issues pertaining to digital rules and national security, has been held accountable for the suspension. Users and stakeholders are still in search of clarification on the matter since the Ministry has not yet offered thorough justifications or explanations for the prohibition.
Some social media users have resorted to virtual private networks (VPNs) in reaction to the ban in order to get around limitations and utilise X’s services.
