The government of Bangladesh has taken a tough stance on gambling and porn websites and has moved to block more than 17,000 websites in the country—about 2,200 of them gambling websites.
The sites are being blocked by the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission. The move was announced through a Facebook post by Mustafa Jabbar, the country’s Telecommunications and Information Technology Minister.
Jabbar said in the post claimed that the internet’s intended use was to benefit young people and the government felt that gambling and pornography-related websites were not helping achieve that goal.
The government also blocked Tik Tok and Bigo—two popular apps for smartphones used for sharing video that have often seen posting of videos critical of the government and recent elections.