WordPress has been banned in Pakistan with local news outlets reporting the WordPress.com domain and hosted websites can’t be accessed.
When trying to access the site, a warning appears stating “The site you are trying to access contains content that is prohibited for viewership from within Pakistan”. It’s a similar notice to the those on YouTube, another banned site.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the censor, is known for taking down popular websites from the West. The ban can be temporary, or in some cases like YouTube, it can be permanent.
Pakistan hasn’t confirmed if WordPress goes into the temporary or permanent list. Other bans on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and IMDb have come and gone, but WordPress is a different beast.
WordPress allows anyone in Pakistan to open a blog and start writing. This can be problematic for a country trying to keep full control of its population, especially in times where the youth are looking at new ways to communicate online.
WordPress hasn’t commented on the ban. For what it’s worth, sites that use WordPress.org’s back-end technologies appear to be unaffected by the ban, meaning news outlets using WordPress will be able to continue doing business in Pakistan.
