High Court Ordered to Ban Facebook in Pakistan by 6th October 2011

Facebook has finally met its fate in a judgment passed by Lahore high court. Justice Azmat Saeed ordered the Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology to block the social networking website, Facebook for maintaining content of religious discrimination. According to news published in Pakistan today, there was a petition demanding the ban on Facebook for holding notorious competition based on blasphemous caricatures on May 20, 2011. The court has ordered the government to disabled Facebook or ban Facebook and deliver a compliance report by October 6, 2011.

This is being rightfully done to a social networking site that supports religious discrimination. A Similar event took place an year back with consequences that followed to temporarily restrict access to Facebook in Pakistan. Either the mistake is somehow repeated or intentionally done because Facebook Platform Policies clearly state:

You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

Even if the Facebook administrators failed to see it the first time, how come they not notice it when the competition was intentionally held again after a period of one year? The administrators have the complete control to remove any controversial material being posted on their website to ensure quality as stated in Facebook terms:

* You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
* We respect other people’s rights, and expect you to do the same.
* You will not post content or take any action on Facebook that infringes or violates someone else’s rights or otherwise violates the law.
* We can remove any content or information you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates this Statement.

What sort of right do Facebook respect if it supports humiliation of a certain religion despite having complete authority to remove content based on controversy? This also provokes another question in reader’s mind, why is a social networking website being used as a tool to promote religious violence?