Islamabad, Pakistan: The year 2024 is ending, leaving many debates in Pakistan, including the much-discussed installation of Firewalls to regulate unwanted content.
From June 2024 onward, the government of Pakistan claimed that the country is installing a national firewall to filter and block “propaganda and unwanted content” online, enhance its capacity to protect digital data from hackers, and ensure cybersecurity. The opponents called this act a violation of human rights, an abuse of power, and censorship. Internet was slowed down due to this new kind of alleged control over social media harming those whose bread and butter is linked with bonafide work such as providing services to foreign companies for managing their data etc. This firewall network security device is placed to monitor and filter incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security parameters. It constitutes a barrier that sits between a private internal network and the public Internet. The main purpose of a firewall is to allow non-threatening traffic in and to keep dangerous and undesirable traffic out.
PTI claimed that this arrangement was in place to control its hatemongering brigade that includes YouTubers Imran Riaz, Mansoor Ali Khan, Matiullah Jan, Asad Toor, Sadiq Jan, Saqib Kharam, Umar Draz Gondal, Samina Pasha and many more.
Events from September to December 2024 indicated that Firewalls were not installed for them or at least did not hurt their outreach because their viewers were unaffected rather than increased on some specific dates when PTI was marching towards Islamabad during September and November. The government instead of fighting propaganda warfare with PTI opted for technology but failed as these hatemongers successfully kept injecting negativity among the masses through their vlogs during PTI’s attacks on Islamabad.
In reality, the much-talked and much-promoted “controlling hatemongering” did not affect who is spreading hate in the country. Instead of arresting hatemongers or fighting their narratives, the government practically did a futile exercise and got nothing out of it and just earned a bad name for clamping censorship in the country.
This so-called geo-fencing firewall” could not manage to track content in real-time and could not control and restrict propaganda on the days of PTI’s events.
