Pakistan blocks YouTube

The Pakistani government today said it had blocked access to YouTube because of growing “sacrilegious” content on the video-sharing website.

The move comes a day after the Pakistan government blocked Facebook because of a page on the social networking site that encourages users to post images of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed – considered blasphemous under Islam.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said in a statement that the government took action after it failed to convince the two websites to remove “derogatory material”.

Access to the online encyclopaedia site Wikipedia and the photo-sharing site Flickr was also restricted.