Twitter has agreed to block "blasphemous" and "unethical" tweets and accounts in Pakistan. The decision came in response to several requests made by a Pakistani bureaucrat who was offended by some of the content he came across on the social network.
The bureaucrat, named by the New York Times as Abdul Batin of the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, was offended by five different instances of "blasphemous" and "unethical" content on Twitter, all of which the company agreed to censor. As the Times reports, the tweets include "crude drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, photographs of burning Qurans, and messages from a handful of anti-Islam bloggers and an American porn star who now attends Duke University."
Though Twitter frequently touts its record on free speech, it often complies with country-specific requests to remove offensive content as a way to insulate itself from being altogether blocked in those countries. In the past the social network has blocked accounts and tweets espousing anti-semitism in France and neo-Nazism in Germany.
[via The New York Times]
