Different parts of the country experienced YouTube shutdown Sunday evening. The online video-sharing website became inaccessible in different parts of Pakistan right when Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan was addressing a public rally in Islamabad.
Notably, the electronic media watchdog in the wee hours of Sunday banned live telecast of Imran Khan’s speeches on television channels. To offset this restriction, the PTI social media team relied on the power of social media and allowed over 500 pages on the social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, etc to live telecast Khan’s speech besides airing it on its official YouTube channel.
The social media users started complaining about YouTube’s outage around 7pm. The activity on Downdetector- an online platform that provides users with real-time information about the status of various websites and services – also endorsed that the outage was not specific to any area but expanded to different parts of the country.
This also sparked outrage among the PTI leaders and supporters who blamed the government for using ‘fascist’ tactics to suppress Khan’s voice.