Most Pakistanis do not fully realise the radically changed dynamics of information access that have transformed the nature of social discourse of the last decade. Interpersonal online communications has exploded with the traditionally conservative society, discernibly transforming into a society of intimate strangers, most having never met except online.

In terms of sheer numbers, of the 192 million Pakistanis, over 39 million were using the internet at the close of 2016 (a full one percent of the world’s share), which included 27 million on Facebook. While no official data is available for Twitter users in Pakistan, over 4.5 million tweets are issued from Pakistan every month. That’s a lively, vociferous community!

In the year 2000, there were just 130,000 Facebook users. The number of users have doubled over the last three years alone. Over 90 per cent of internet users in Pakistan use social media platform actively. Clearly, social media has emerged, for a large number of Pakistanis, as the principal platform for freedom of expression with individuals posting their views and opinions on anything and everything.

Over the past few years, social media has seemingly overtaken mainstream media -- such as television and newspapers -- as the primary source of information and opinion. Not just for logistical reasons -- a widespread availability and use of smartphones and faster broadband and 3G/4G connectivity -- but also simply because the staple fare of TV, caricaturised news bulletins and formulaic, bland current affairs talk shows, offers them little.

Their perspectives absent and not entertained in the mainstream media content, the overwhelming majority of young Pakistanis now use social media to say what’s on their minds.

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The initial years of giddy opportunity to broadcast themselves and in finding ready engagement with others has helped both strands of the broader spectrum of opinion in Pakistan -- the conservatives and the liberals -- find their voices online. While the conservative schools of thought in Pakistan have always had centre-stage to themselves on mainstream media, for the progressive schools of thought it has been a liberating experience being able to find both a stage and an audience for the freedom to express opinions that even today cannot be entertained by TV, radio and print. This gradually earned the progressive individuals and communities the derogatory -- and oxymoronic -- moniker of ‘liberal fascists.’

In the historic context where the state has relentlessly frowned upon alternative or private interpretations of history, citizen’s rights, politics and religion, the online space has, over the past several years, provided a refreshing ground for citizens and communities simply yearning for a frank discussion in public spaces. This has helped a more middle-ground and progressive discourse to emerge in Pakistani digital spaces, including cyberspace.

However, as a critical mass of opinion of citizens shifted from offline media to online media, a state that aggressively influences and manipulates ideology and opinion in the shape of a hyper nationalistic, faith-laced narrative taught in schoolbooks and heavily encouraged in mainstream media, took note.

While progressive voices have always had to face attacks from those schooled to entertain conspiracy theories, a discernibly menacing trend emerged in the aftermath of the attack on the Peshawar school that birthed the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism. Seemingly overnight an army of twitter accounts -- either anonymous or with transparently fake identities with a transparent mission to troll target audiences, especially progressives -- rose to attack any and all voices raising questions about implementation of the Plan or the growing role of the security establishment in politics.

This came amid a discernible policy of conflating the patriotic and religious sentiment considered necessary to underpin NAP led by the security establishment.

This started to have a chilling effect as time wore on in 2015 and 2016. In 2015, the state was reported by national and international digital rights groups of having secretly purchased an expensive mass surveillance software that could only have the primary aim of mapping opinion trends in the Pakistani cyberspace and shortlist communities and individuals whose views and opinions conflicted with the new state narrative on steroids.

After sitting on the fence for a while, the Nawaz Sharif government finally sided with the security establishment in 2016 to aid the process by enacting, amid stiff civil society resistance, the draconian Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), 2016.

Without the incorporation of best-practices safeguards proposed by human rights and citizens groups, PECA is nothing but a thinly-disguised legal framework to deter and punish the freedom of expression online. The steep fines and harsh jail terms showcased in the law are proof. With one fell swoop Pakistan has, by enacting this law, become one of the few countries in the world that all but match physical-world state high-handedness in the virtual world also.

As 2017 has dawned, Pakistani cyberspace has now decidedly become as dangerous for people who take their Article 19 guarantee of freedom of expression seriously as the offline world. Nobody is safe online anymore -- the ability to engage with friends and to be able to express yourself freely is now all but gone. The worst allegations that anyone in Pakistan can face -- blasphemy and treason -- can now be bandied about as easily online and with as calamitous consequences as in the real world.

Ask netizens Salman Haider, Waqas Goraya, Asim Saeed, Ahmed Raza and Samar Abbas who were kidnapped in the same fashion from different cities with their abductors coming to their house later and collecting their laptops. Their crime: being too liberal and expressing uncensored opinions about the military, mullahs and militants, often in the same breath.

The irony: none of them ever incited violence. But now with open charges of blasphemy and treason against them and demands for extreme violence to be visited upon them from the hyper-patriots and aggressive-religious from communities whose worldview matches that of the establishment, they can, even if they are set free, never live in the country again.

Three other netizens are already in the early stages of being charged under PECA for circulating a photo on social media that shows Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Iqbal Jhagra but claiming it is actually the chief justice. Honest mistakes are also a crime now.

The recent ominous aggression by the state against openness online and refusal to restrict the aggressive rightwing attacks on the ‘disappeared’ bloggers and the progressive communities is a stark message that the era of unfettered freedom of expression in Pakistani cyberspace in general and social media in particular is all but over.

Social media in Pakistani digital spaces, therefore, is the new mainstream media for the purposes of enforcement of offline regimen of national security objectives. Absolute freedoms for citizens, especially in terms of freedom of expression and right to information, have never been given to Pakistanis in their offline lives. Full freedoms online were always going to be too good to be true.

Pakistani netizens will have to stop leading double lives and conform to the same lack of freedoms online as they do offline.