According to the internet blockade observatory NetBlocks, after Twitter went down all across Pakistan from 10 p.m on May 17 to 1.30 am on May 18, 2020 Pakistan Standard Time, the bulk of reports it received from the country described a loss of access to affected services. Media Matters for Democracy from Pakistan reports the outage and calls upon the government to issue an official statement on the matter, clarifying whether Twitter was blocked and if it was, on what grounds. “This incident merits clarity on part of the authorities, and we demand transparency from PTA (Pakistan Telecommunication Authority) on whether inaccessibility of Twitter in Pakistan was by design and done on orders of the government.” NetBlocks data indicate that backend image and video servers, in particular, were unavailable during the disruption period, corroborating these reports. A preliminary test of OONI Probe suggests that the website was potentially blocked in the country. However, the reason for the outage that lasted for at least three hours, is not clear. Working with Pakistan's Digital Rights Foundation, Netblocks analysed the network data and confirmed that there had been no international outage at the time of disruption: ? Report: Evidence of nation-scale Twitter, Periscope and Zoom disruption across #Pakistan on 17 May 2020. Analysis of network data with @DigitalRightsPK confirms no international outage at time of disruption and establishes a timeline of events.https://t.co/Geub2awRMD — NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) May 18, 2020 Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the #TwitterDown hashtag went viral on the microblogging platform, as people used Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to voice their concerns. A VPN is a technology used primarily to help people access websites that are blocked in the jurisdiction where they are located. Thank You @ForumSaath for organising such a successful #SAATHVirtualConf2020 to discuss the most pressing issues of #Pakistan. Waiting for videos of the event as #TwitterDown for the period. More power to #SAATH @AWGoraya pic.twitter.com/wxHTOvlGRk — Ayub Assak (@AyubAssak) May 17, 2020 Twitter confirmed that there was no disruption caused from their end, nor had it seen any indications of an outage on its server. The very same day, the video conferencing platform Zoom also faced technical issues, but prior to the blockade in Pakistan, the company issued an update stating that the problem had been resolved. No local outages were reported and Netblocks confirmed that the disruption was localised: NetBlocks performance metrics from around the world show that Sunday’s disruption was localized to Pakistan. Many drew their own conclusions as to the cause. Pakistani politician Farhat Ullah Babar, for example, suggested that Twitter was blocked to target a virtual conference organised by South Asians Against Terrorism For Human Rights (SAATH): The blocking was not universal, it was specifically for Pakistan. Most intriguingly it occurred just at scheduled time of #SAATHVirtualConf2020 to discuss state of human rights in Pakistan. PTA must come out clean. Parliament committee on IT please take notice https://t.co/e3cYCfRKdy — Farhatullah Babar (@FarhatullahB) May 19, 2020 The collective's Zoom conference, which was scheduled to begin on Sunday, May 17 at 10 p.m. — the precise time the Twitter and Zoom outages happened — intended to focus on the issues of enforced disappearances, state-sanctioned killings and diminishing democracy in Pakistan. Gul Bukhari, a Pakistani journalist living in exile in the United Kingdom, is an active member of the SAATH Forum. In 2018, Bukhari was abducted by Pakistan's notorious spy agency because of her critical views. She told Global Voices in a call: [The] SAATH Conference was planned as a virtual conference [to be] attended by prominent Pakistani human rights defenders, public intellectuals, journalists, scholars living in Pakistan, as well as those living in exile in different countries. When the conference began, people started looking for the link and that is when they noticed that Twitter, Periscope and Zoom were not working in Pakistan. Bukhari said that many people did not know the SAATH conference was even happening; the blockage actually garnered it more attention: It is time that the establishment understands that such tactics are counterproductive, especially in today's time when people can gain access to social media through VPNs and proxy websites to exercise their right to freedom of speech and get information. This is not the first time such an outage has happened in the country. Previously, the authorities resorted to shutting down the internet to curb coverage of public gatherings organized by the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM).