Twitter caves to Pakistani blasphemy censorship requests

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Twitter has honored five requests made by a Pakistani bureaucrat working for the country's Telecommunications Authority to censor tweets and accounts it considered "blasphemous" and "unethical."

According to the New York Times, the social network agreed to shield certain tweets from the eyes of Pakistani Twitter users at the request of Abdul Batin. The requests including censoring crude drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, photographs of burning Qurans, and tweets from anti-Islam bloggers and an American porn star.

This is apparently the first time Twitter has agreed to block specific content in Pakistan since it introduced its country-specific censorship policy in 2012. The policy takes into accounts local laws that apply to tweets and will consider reactively withholding access to certain content if they receive "valid and properly scoped" requests from authorized entities. Despite this, the NYT claims that a number of accounts were blocked not reactively, but in anticipation of the annual "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day," which falls on May 20.

The first time Twitter's censorship policy was enforced was in Germany in 2012 when it banned a neo-Nazi partywhich are not allowed under German lawfrom the social network. Since then the policy has come into effect in several countries, although Twitter aims to remain as transparent as possible using several mechanisms, including partnering with Chilling Effects to publish notifications of when it withholds content, as well requests to withhold it.

Pakistan's oppressive blasphemy laws have been enforced in an increasingly brutal manner recently, resulting in arrests, murders, and assassination attempts, which is why it makes it particularly concerning that Twitter is complying with them. Twitter's defense is that it would rather prevent a small amount of content that contravenes local laws than have the whole site blocked, denying a country the ability to use the platform at all.

This is what caused the social network to bow to pressure from the Turkish government last month. In the face of an outright ban, Twitter agreed to close several accounts the government had deemed harmful.

Several rights groups have questioned the legitimacy of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, as well as Twitter's decision to acquiesce to its requests. Wired.co.uk has put these concerns to Twitter and will update this article if we hear back.

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Twitter caves to Pakistani blasphemy censorship requests