Fact-check: YouTube has not been banned in Pakistan

YouTube, Google, Gmail are down in Pakistan and around the world however, the services have not been banned

Web Desk

December 14, 2020

YouTube, Google, Gmail, Google Meet, Google Analytics and other popular services crash in Pakistan and across the globe
No official comment so far from any of these platforms on the outage
Pakistanis frantically search for any news on whether YouTube has once again been banned in the country

As YouTube, Google, Gmail and other platforms started malfunctioning for users across the globe, many Pakistanis started believing that YouTube had been once again banned in the country.

On Gmail, emails are not loading and an error message reads: "Oops...the system encountered a problem - retrying."

On YouTube, a cartoon image of a monkey appears, simply saying: "Something went wrong..."

As observed, Pakistanis started frantically searching on Google whether YouTube had been banned in the country.

The most searched items in the past few hours on Google included "YouTube error 53", "YouTube banned in Pakistan", 'YouTube ban in Pakistan" and "Is YouTube banned in Pakistan".

Here is what people have been searching on Google ever since YouTube started malfunctioning in Pakistan and across the world.

However, these popular services and platforms have not been banned in Pakistan. The servers of Google, Gmail and YouTube are down across the world with many users experiencing the outage.

However, while there have been several memes and comments on social media about the servers crashing, no official comment yet has been made from the platforms about the crash.

Pakistanis have been understandably edgy over whether YouTube got banned once again or not, given how the video-sharing website was banned by the government in 2012.

YouTube had been banned for three years in Pakistan after a video named "Innocence of Muslims" went viral on YouTube. The video had hurt sentiments of Muslims around the world for its negative portrayal of Islam.

The video had sparked protests in Pakistan as well, resulting in the ban. However, three years later in January 2016, Pakistan lifted the ban after reaching an agreement with YouTube according to which Pakistani authorities were given the power to block content it deemed offensive.