Aadil Bashir
Srinagar: The ban on social media in Kashmir was removed on Friday as it completes a month today.
Earlier, the Jammu and Kashmir government imposed a ban on 22 social media networks on 26 April in the wake of heightened protests by students in the valley and live streaming of videos.
“Any message or class of messages to or from any persons or class of persons relating to any subject or any pictorial content through the following social networking sites shall not be transmitted in the Kashmir valley, with immediate effect, for a period of one month or till further orders, whichever is earlier,” the earlier order stated.
The banned social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, WhatsApp, Vine, Buzznet, Xanga, and FlickrQQ, WeChat, Ozone, Tumblr, Google , Baidu, Skype, Viber, Line, Snapchat, Pinterest, Telegram, Reddit and Snapfish
However, netizens continue to defy the ban by using Virtual Private Networks (VPN) technology that allows users to access banned social media sites and instant messaging application by setting up proxy Internet connections.
