Pakistan has a notorious history of blocking websites, particularly social media networks, that allow for the dissemination of information that isn’t being regulated by the authorities. There is a long list of very famous names that were blocked in the past and the government keeps sending “take down” requests regarding “offensive pages and accounts” to Facebook and Twitter, on a regular basis.

 

It appears that Reddit is under the Government’s radar with the website having become inaccessible, recently

reddit-blocked-pakistan-1
Source: mashable.com

Reddit is an American social media, news aggregation network and a discussion board. It likes to label itself as the “front page” of the internet. It was founded in 2005 by two University of Virginia students and as of 2017, it has 542 million average monthly users, making it one of the most popular websites in the world.

But since the weekend, many people in Pakistan are asking this question

 

The problem appears to have started on Friday, October 20

 

And everyone’s generally very confused

 

It soon became clear that it was a problem on certain internet service providers, only

Apparently, the website is accessible on some networks, including Ufone and PTCL (rather surprisngly, tbh) but many major ISPs have blocked it.

 

And people began speculating soon after

 

There was the same question that everyone wanted an answer

 

But no one got any response

 

Many users were pretty surprised

https://twitter.com/hamzaarshad223/status/921715126021042176

 

Others just took it as yet another attempt by the authorities to censor the internet

https://twitter.com/oshafique/status/921737318079139840

https://twitter.com/AdrakLussun/status/921752183808430081

 

Neither Reddit nor the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority have released any statement regarding the blocking of the website in the country

While we await updates on the matter, we’re all here asking the same question

 

Is Reddit working for you?

 

Cover image via: nextpowerup.com