Islamabad – Amid the ongoing outage of X in Pakistan, an outrageous resolution has been moved by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Bahramand Tangi seeking a ban on all mainstream social media platforms operating in the country. According to Pakistani news outlet Geo News, the problematic resolution will be on the Senate agenda for its meeting which is scheduled to take place on March 4.  In the resolution, the senator called for bans on all social networking platforms including Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter — now X, and YouTube. The PPP senator reasoned that sites could be possibly misused against the country's interest to "save the young generation from their negative and devastating effects”.

"Cognizant of the fact that social media platforms are adversely affecting the young generation in the country; Acknowledging the fact that these platforms are being used for promotion of norms against our religion and culture, creating hatred amongst the people on the grounds of language and religion," the resolution obtained by Geo News reads. Tangi who pushed the resolution will complete his tenure as the Senator on March 11. The Pakistani senator insisted that the ban is needed since social media platforms are facilitating "the spread of negative and malicious propaganda against the armed forces of Pakistan." However, it is important to note that the resolution will remain non-binding even if it is passed. 

PPP distances itself from the resolution

Meanwhile, PPP Secretary General Nayyar Bukhari said that his party had nothing to do with the resolution and went on to claim that Tangi was not even a member of the party, Geo News reported. Bhukhari also mentioned that the senator in question was also slapped with a show-cause notice for deviating from party policy last month, but he failed to furnish an explanation before the party. PPP terminated Senator Tangi's basic membership for violating the party discipline and not responding to the notice. The show-cause notice was issued to him over his silence on a resolution seeking a delay in the February 8 polls. It is important to note that social networking site X has been largely offline since February 17, with occasional service restorations, mainly after former commissioner Rawalpindi Liaquat Ali Chatta admitted in front of the media that the “elections were rigged”. In light of this, a majority of users are using VPNs to access the platform.