PM Imran Khan seeks to shield innocent minds from online pornographic content

• PM Imran says character building very crucial in modern era.
• Proliferation of tech gadgets has made everything available, he says.
• PM chairs meeting on blocking pornographic websites in country.

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday directed authorities to ensure effective gate-keeping of online content to shield innocent minds against the "ruthless onslaught" of immoral and pornographic content online.

The prime minister's directives came as he chaired a meeting on blocking pornographic websites in the country, a statement from the Prime Minister's Office said.

"Character building is very crucial in the modern tech-savvy era. The proliferation of tech gadgets and 3G/4G internet technology has made all sort of content available to everyone," the prime minister said.

“We need to protect our youth, especially kids, from being exposed to immoral and unethical content available online,” he added.

The prime minister was told that Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), particularly Cloudfare, having 1-2% of total internet traffic share, have complaints against them of serving pornographic content, the statement said.

According to the statement, "other CDNs don’t serve pornographic material as per their policies".

The prime minister was also informed that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) needs to work with internet service providers (ISPs)/CDNs for blocking pornographic content through CDNs, particularly Cloudfare, the statement added.

He was informed that PTA also needs to "enhance its Warehouse Management System (WMS) capability by integrating with some global and regularly updated databases of pornographic sites to block them at URL and domain level".

Moreover, he was briefed that PTA is working on the feasibility of this project whose implementation time is about 2 months, the statement added.

Two days back, during the Rehmatul-lil-Alameen conference in Islamabad on the occasion of Eid Milad un Nabi, the premier had expressed his concern about the youth of the country and said that bringing them towards the path of righteousness is a challenge.

The prime minister said that parents are unable to take away mobile phones from children by force and cannot block their social media.

"Although there is no compulsion in religion, we can show them the right way. We can, at least, train our children and talk to them about the bad effects of [Western] culture," he said.