PTA orders YouTube to remove ‘hate speech’ content

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has ordered YouTube, the world’s biggest online video-sharing platform, to remove the indecent content and hate speech from its site.

The PTA on Twitter posted that it had asked YouTube to immediately block vulgar, indecent, immoral, nude, and hate speech content for viewing in Pakistan.

Press Release: PTA has asked video-sharing platform YouTube to immediately block vulgar, indecent, immoral, nude and hate speech content for viewing in Pakistan. pic.twitter.com/luZWrrsOnM

— PTA (@PTAofficialpk) August 27, 2020

The telecommunication authority stated that YouTube must ensure that ‘objectionable content’ is immediately blocked and that it is not used for disseminating such content. The PTA further announced that the Google-owned service was directed to put in place an effective content monitoring and moderation mechanism so that the unlawful material is detected or deleted and not accessible within Pakistan.

Earlier the Senate was informed by the PTA chairman that a total of 830,000 websites had been blocked for containing pornographic content. He had told the committee, which met with PPP Senator Rubina Khalid in the chair in Islamabad, that as many as 2,364 websites carrying child pornographic content were blocked on the basis of information shared by Interpol.

Recently, Google had deleted more than 2,500 YouTube channels tied to China as part of its effort to prevent misinformation on the video-sharing platform. The channels generally posted ‘spammy, non-political content,’ but a small subset touched on politics.