Pakistan’s National Assembly ignored all objections and protests by the opposition, digital rights activists and journalists to quickly push through the Prevention of Electronic Crimes (Amendment) Act this week in an effort to police social media platforms. are giving due to which the hybrid government has struggled.
However, the question is, is Pakistan unique in its efforts to come to grips with social media? The answer is an overwhelming number, as illustrated by the examples of the US, India, and China, where social media have faced challenges of varying degrees and types.
Since his exit from the military leadership in April 2022, Omar Raslam and his subsequent civilian leadership in the PPP, since Omar Raslam as prime minister and his civilian counterpart in the PPP. Acolytes have struggled to control social media platforms, ever since their political rivals dominated the prime minister’s tenure.
Despite considerable effort, both legal and illegal, including enforced disappearances and arrests of social media workers belonging to Imran Khan’s PTI, the government’s efforts to control social media, where the latter party Gets an unprecedented lead, has been disappointed.
Pakistan has justified its moves to put social media platforms on a leash, saying they are destabilizing the gains clearly made by the economy under the hybrid system from 2022. The fact is, more than anything else, these initiatives are putting up roadblocks. A high growth sector. How?
The question is, is Pakistan unique in its efforts to come to grips with social media?
Whether it’s a firewall that slows down or blocks the Internet on certain platforms or other measures, software exporters say it’s hurting their business and forcing people overseas. Presenters are also depriving individuals of the opportunity to earn badly needed foreign exchange for the country.
India’s exports are largely driven by the services sector, ie. Experts say that the huge foreign exchange surplus of the country owes itself to these exports. And here we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater because we are bereft of ideas on how to ‘control’ government against government content on social media.
However, Pakistan is not alone in trying to curb the free flow of data and information (admittedly, these too include lies and propaganda). For example, look at the current tension between TechToc and the authorities in the US, where President Donald Trump has reinstated the platform three months after the ban.
Officially, though, the concern about TikTok is a ‘Chinese-controlled’ firm that harvests US user history to develop algorithms and other digital weapons that could be used in an information or propaganda war with the US. There may, however, be other, more pressing problems. .
Israel’s Gaza genocide is one. While US-owned (and controlled) social media platforms such as Facebook are said to have used algorithms to block content depicting the events entirely, X and even Meta’s Instagram They were also more clever.
In the words of one social media user, X’s Elon Musk has repeatedly spoken of a commitment to ‘free speech’, but has made no such promise to ensure ‘free access’. The devil is in the details. While most of us were free to post almost anything information/opinion about Gaza, critics say the platform algorithm kicked in to maximize the reach of pro-Gaza Genocide posts.
Since Musk took over Twitter and reinvented it, many accounts, which were growing a certain number of followers each month, have stopped growing as much as their reach. My own ‘follower’ count hasn’t increased in months, nor have my reach or views. I can only attribute this to the gap between my worldview and the one promoted by Musk’s algorithm.
Tektok Apartheid was a thorn in the side of the supporters of the state and therefore needed to be banned. Now there are fewer indications from the US president himself that he wants an American businessman to buy the app. It flows for content and direct information in future conflicts, including in Gaza, if the peace agreement falls through. Already with the bulk of traditional media, American free speech advocates have been largely silent on this ‘algorithm-controlled’ freedom.
At least China is not hypocritical and does not lecture the world on the virtues of freedom. It firewalls all the content it doesn’t like. It is an authoritarian state that has decided to focus on economic development, while leaving political rights for another day.
Beijing has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty in the past 40 years. The World Bank said in a report in April 2022: “At the same time, China has contributed nearly three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty.”
Again, this is by no means an endorsement of China’s two-track policy whereby economic prosperity is set against a backdrop of some or no political rights. Ironically, while China has the world’s problem with this policy, it is doing exactly the same thing to rightists in the Arab world as they toe Washington’s line on global and regional politics.
India, where the space for non-Hindutva politics and ideas is shrinking dramatically under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is a different story. Those in power have much of the traditional media in their pockets and a handful of BJP politicians and elegiacs like Ambani and Adani are calling the shots.
The size of India’s market gives the country immense leverage. It has pressured all social media platforms to sign strict rules and regulations, forcing them to moderate (read: censor) content that the government finds objectionable. Tech companies that acquire from India are weak-kneed in the face of government pressure.
In a fluid, ever-evolving situation, it is difficult to predict or visualize the exact shape of things to come. One hopes that this interesting and challenging scenario does not lead to a world where we celebrate ‘free access to information’ from trafficking and forget how it can be algorithmically tainted.
The author is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, January 26, 2025
