Feminally

thedailywhat:

Cell Phone Censorship of the Day: Last Monday, The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority handed local cell phone carriers a list of 1,600 words and phrases that were to be permanently blocked from being texted, under penalty of legal action.

They had seven days to comply with the order.

While some are at least comprehensible from puritanical standpoint, the Authority appears to have gone out of its way to predict how users might circumvent the block by banning such terms as “athlete’s foot” and “flogging the dolphin.”

“The filtering is not good for the system and may degrade the quality of network services,” said an anonymous official from an unidentified telecoms firm. “[P]lus it would be a great inconvenience to our subscribers if their SMS was not delivered due to the wrong choice of words.”

Freedom of speech is enshrined in Parkistan’s constitution, so at least one group — Bytes for All — intends to challenge the new edict in court.

“We are now witnessing a new ruthless wave of moral policing in the digital communication sphere of Pakistan imposed by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority,” said country coordinator Shahzad Ahmed.

Meanwhile, Pakistanis have taken to Twitter, using the hashtag #PTAbannedlist to mock and deride the new rules. 

[afp / pcmag.]

Good news: this could never happen in this country!*

Better news: oh thank god we are all safe now!**

*What everyone everywhere always thinks until 15 minutes after it happens to them.

** What we all try to convince ourselves 15 minutes after it happens to us.