According to The News Agency, Wikipedia’s failure to take down allegedly harmful or blasphemous content led to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocking internet access to the website on Friday.
Earlier, the country’s services provided by the portal had been downgraded by the telecom authority.
Late on Friday night, a PTA representative was phoned and asked about if Wikipedia had been blocked. The representative responded “yes” when asked.
Cause of Wikipedia Blockage
The PTA degraded the encyclopedia website for 48 hours on the high court’s directive because it contained offensive material, disrupting and slowing access to it.
According to the PTA spokeswoman, Wikipedia was contacted to prohibit or remove the specified content by issuing a notice pursuant to applicable law and court order (s).
A chance for a hearing was also offered, but neither the platform obliged by taking down the offensive material nor did it show up in front of the authority.
Wikipedia’s services were reduced for 48 hours with the instruction to ban or remove the reported items due to the platform’s willful disregard for the PTA’s directives.
If Wikipedia doesn’t comply, the platform has been blocked inside of Pakistan.
If the alleged illegal content is blocked or removed, the reinstatement of Wikipedia’s services will be given another thought.
Usama Khilji, a proponent of digital rights, criticized the government for shutting the information portal in his response to the development.
“Wikipedia, World’s largest encyclopedia, appears to be blocked in Pakistan by @PTAofficialpk.”
The Bolobhi director said that rather than shutting the entire website, the courts and regulators should recognize that Wikipedia is a platform that is crowd-sourced and anyone with an account can modify entries.
Wikipedia, World’s largest encyclopaedia, appears to be blocked in Pakistan by @PTAofficialpk
Courts & regulator must realise that Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced platform where anyone with an account can edit articles, which they can also do instead of blocking the entire website pic.twitter.com/wIEZzGktio
— Usama Khilji (@UsamaKhilji) February 3, 2023
To read our blog on “How Facebook can assist Wikipedia with the use of AI to validate article sources,” click here.
