Pakistan Bans Facebook and FarmVille Access

On May 19th 2010 Pakistan banned Facebook and thus access to FarmVille!

Pakistan officials were outraged over a Facebook Page that promotes cartoonists' sketches of an Islamic prophet. As reported by AOL News, the Facebook page, considered blasphemous, is titled " 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!' [and] calls on Facebook users to upload drawings of Islam's most holy of holy men... to protest Islamic extremists' threats and violence against past portrayers of Muhammad" (Source: AOL News).

Government authorities in Pakistan responded by blocking access to Facebook for all of Pakistan. Blocking Facebook means that FarmVille players located in Pakistan will not have access to their farms. Currently, even when using Zynga's FarmVille.com to play FarmVille, it still requires you to login to your Facebook account.

Pakistan is known for banning popular internet sites including video sharing mega site YouTube.com, which was banned in Pakistan for almost an entire year because of reportedly hosting un-Islamic content. For now, the Facebook ban is set to be in place until May 31st 2010 and an investigation is being conducted to determine why the Facebook page's competition is being held and if the ban should be extended to a longer period of time.