Pakistan’s science minister opposes telco regulator’s ban on social media apps

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Science Minister Fawad Ahmed Chaudhry said on Tuesday he had advised the country’s telecommunications regulator against blanket bans on social media apps and suggested regulations instead that would help the technology industry grow.
His comments came just hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said it had banned the Singaporean live-streaming app Bigo over “immoral, obscene and vulgar content” and issued a “final warning” to Chinese video sharing platform Tiktok for "similar" reasons.
Earlier this month, PTA also banned the hugely popular online game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG, saying it was addictive, a waste of players’ time and was having an adverse effect on the mental and physical health of the country’s youth.
“I’ve already advised PTA that they should not slap such bans,” Chaudhry said in a phone interview. “All such one-sided bans, I think, won’t help the tech industry.”
“Regulation is something else, ban is something else,” he added. “Regulation? Yes. But, no bans.”
PTA has said it had issued several warnings to social media companies to moderate their content and bring it in line with Pakistani laws, but was not satisfied with the “response.”
Therefore, the regulator said, it had “decided to immediately block Bigo and issue final warning to TikTok to put in place a comprehensive mechanism to control obscenity, vulgarity and immorality through its social media application.”
But Chaudhry said such decisions were not “conducive” to helping Pakistan’s tech industry grow.
The information technology sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in Pakistan and contributes about one percent of GDP at about $3.5 billion, according to government data. IT exports were recorded to be the highest in Pakistan’s history at $1.067 billion in 2017-18, compared to $939 million registered the previous year.
In accordance with the digital policy of Pakistan, announced in 2018, the government aims to achieve an IT export target of $20 billion by 2025.
“Internet is like a library, it’s up to you which kind of book you want to choose,” the science minister said. “If you say the whole library should be shut down because it contains some vulgar books, it’ll obviously not really help Pakistan, especially when Pakistan is growing in the field of technology. Such bans are actually not conducive for the environment.”
Chaudhry also said he was against the ban on PUBG because while Pakistan was the world’s fourth largest software exporter, it was not a significant player in the gaming world.
“We need to take our share [in gaming] because our youth is good at it,” he said.
PTA did not respond to multiple calls and text messages for this story.