Localized YouTube Could See Its Ban Lifted In Pakistan

There are some parts of the world where YouTube is banned. Such places include China and Pakistan. However in the latter’s case, it seems that they are now having discussions in which the ban could potentially be lifted. For those unfamiliar, YouTube was banned in the country since 2012 due to content the government viewed as blasphemous.

It was disclosed at that time that YouTube had apparently asked the Pakistani government to pay them a fee in order to provide a filtering service, which is why the ban has existed even until today. However it was recently revealed that talks are now in progress in which it could potentially bring the service back, and one of those ways would be localization.

Local officials claim that it would be impossible to ban and block blasphemous content completely, but they said that localizing YouTube would go a long way in dealing with that potential problem. This move by Google also seems to suggest that the company is now more open to dealing with countries which had previously blocked its services.

For example a couple of weeks ago, it was reported that Google was considering debuting a heavily-censored Play Store in China in order to appease the local government, which is why this move does not come as a surprise. In fact we reckon it is a welcome one for residents of the country.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Videos (web), Web
Tags: Legal, YouTube