In the first half of 2023, Pakistan has some of the worst internet censorship, according to a new research from VPN and cyber security service Surfshark.
In its half-year study, Pakistan was responsible for three of the 42 new international internet restrictions. The Internet Shutdown Tracker said that these limitations were put into place after the nation’s former prime minister, Imran Khan, was taken into custody on May 9.
Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube were curtailed in Pakistan at that time. For many days after the arrest, there were several instances of brief cellphone network outages all around the nation.
In the first half of 2023, Pakistan had the third-highest number of internet restrictions, after Iran and India, according to the Surfshark research. The majority of these internet outages have continued to occur in Asia.
With 14 instances, Iran had the most incidences of internet outages during this time. These all occurred in Zahedan on Friday during demonstrations brought on by the massacre in Zahedan.
Iran was closely followed by India, which had nine verified occurrences, the majority of which took place during various protest activities.
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