Did Pakistan government overreact by blocking Twitter?

Pakistan blocked Twitter for several hours because it refused to remove some Tweets considered offensive to Islam. The report was fed by one of the countries top telecommunications officials.

The tweets were promoting a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims consider depictions of the prophet, even positive images to be blasphemous.

The government restored access to Twitter at midnight on Sunday, meaning that it was down for around 8 hours at the weekend. Many members of the public felt that the government overreacted by censoring Twitter.

At the time Gabriel Stricker said that the company had not taken down any tweets or made any changes before they were blocked.

Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology had ordered the telecommunications authority to block Twitter because the company had refused to agree to remove the offending tweets.

Pakistan have acted hard in the past, banning Facebook in 2010 over anger for a similar competition. The ban lasted for a full two weeks before being lifted, after Facebook agreed to block the page for Pakistan IP's. The Pakistani government said at the time that it would continue to check other sites for anti Islamic content and links.

Many people in Pakistan were able to use Twitter however by adopting an IP change.

Kitguru says: Many people feel that Pakistani individuals should be able to make up their own minds in regards to potentially offensive content.

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