ISLAMABAD: The government, on Friday, blocked all social media platforms in the country for several hours in order to maintain public order and safety, as per the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). The access to certain social media applications were restricted temporality from 11am-3pm. The decision was taken on the recommendation of the Interior Ministry. According to sources, the government suspended the access to these applications on the apprehension of protests.

According to the Interior Ministry notification the following services were going to be blocked from 1100 hrs – 1500 hrs today (16th Apr 2021) on the orders of the federal government including Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, and Telegram.

According to telecommunication companies they had clear instructions from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block all CDN traffic from 11am to 3pm to control social media traffic due to the protests. To comply with the order, they had to shut down Akamai/Facebook/Google.

Later, the PTA issued another statement while saying that social media apps have been restored.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021