Posted on 05/20/2012 7:51:05 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Pakistan blocked the social networking website Twitter for much of Sunday because it refused to remove tweets considered offensive to Islam, said one of the country's top telecommunications officials.
The tweets were promoting a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, said Mohammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication's Authority. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.
The government restored access to Twitter before midnight Sunday, about eight hours after it initially blocked access.
Twitter spokesman Gabriel Stricker said the company had not taken down any tweets or made any other changes before Pakistan stopped blocking the site.
Yaseen said Sunday afternoon that Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology had ordered the telecommunications authority to block Twitter because the company refused to remove the offending tweets. In contrast, Facebook had agreed to address Pakistan's concerns about the competition, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at customwire.ap.org ...
Does Twitter and Facebook get any revenue from its users in Pakistan? If not they should be thankful if the gov’t there decides to block the freeloaders from accessing their servers.
What if this is an excuse by Pakistan’s government to shut down Twitter in fear of an “Arab Spring” uprising there?
You mean an “Islamic Awakening” as all the Imams call it . . . ?
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