Social media platforms faced disruption Sunday evening across Pakistan, according to NetBlocks, an organisation that tracks internet outages around the world.
The tracker said leading social networking platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube faced widespread disruption in various parts of the country. The outages occurred amid the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s virtual fundraising telethon, NetBlocks added.
The disruption comes just weeks after PTI’s virtual rally was affected by similar connectivity problems, which many on social media ascribed to a possible tactic from the caretaker government to the PTI’s political campaigning ahead of the 2024 general election.
At the time of publishing this report, DRM’s staff were still unable to access Twitter or reload its feed, which was around 10p.pm. The news piece was tweeted via a VPN (virtual private network). YouTube and Facebook became really slow; however, Instagram was working fine.
The complaints of connectivity problems emerged from major cities, including Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad.
On December 17, 2023, Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube faced nationwide disruptions during the PTI’s virtual rally. A large of number of digital and human rights advocates, politicians, public figures, and internet users condemned the outages.
Reports of slow internet services are still surfacing from different parts of the country.
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly
