Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has done various acts which have deemed to

be controversial and caused discourse’s amongst people. A recent example of this is how in
2020 PTA declared that it will remove any content that causes harm to the government, they
also said “A service provider or social media company could face a fine up to 500 million
rupees ($3.14 million) for non-compliance” this stirred many different opinions most of
which were negative for example how the Asian Internet Coalition (AIC) stated that the new
rule declared by PTA will “damage the ability of people to access a free and open internet
(https://www.reuters.com/article/pakistan-socialmedia-censorship-idINKBN27Z2KF). Pakistan has
not only faced criticism over their censorship rules in the recent years but according to an
international report it has been considered not free in terms of internet use for 9 years.
(https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/pakistan-among-worst-10-countries-for-internet-freedom-
report-2128004). Moreover, as stated in an article by dawn a report published by Freedom on the
Net (FoTN) tells us that “Globally, Pakistan is among the worst 10 countries in terms of
internet and digital media freedom.” this report also “found election manipulation in Pakistan
through informational tactics. PTA’s intense censorship can also be seen by the fact that “Of
the 17,807 content restrictions made by Facebook globally, the highest number — over 31
per cent — of the requests originated from Pakistan between January and July 2019”
(https://www.dawn.com/news/1516695) .
http://pu.edu.pk/images/journal/studies/PDF-FILES/Artical-13_v17-1-16.pdf