Over the past week, Bangladeshi authorities have banned extra than 18,000 websites and apps as part of a so-called “warfare” on pornography.
A list of targeted websites despatched to internet vendors covered Somewhereinblog. Internet, the internet’s largest Bengali language-primarily based blogging platform, Google Books, and favorite social media apps like Tik Tok and Bingo.
Some excessive-profile social media customers have been summoned to police stations and requested to take away “vulgar” content material from their pages, in what appears to be an effort of ethical policing.
Last November, the Bangladesh High Court directed the authorities to dam all pornography websites and obscene materials on-line inside the next six months. Soon after that, the Bangladesh government blocked greater than 4,000 pornographic and, as a minimum, 176 other web sites.
This week’s censorship spree seems to be the modern-day result of the ruling. On February 18, the Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Minister Mustafa Jabbar wrote on his Facebook page: