Kazakhstan’s Committee for Communication, Informatisation and Information has blocked the Tumblr microblogging platform for promoting terrorism and religious extremism as well as porn.

The Internet Association of Kazakhstan posted on its Facebook page the committee’s official response to a complaint by the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs that Islamic State ran its news service Dawla News on Tumblr, publishing news about the number of fighters it killed in Syria and names of settlements it captured. Islamic State was banned in Kazakhstan by an Astana court as a terrorist organisation in October 2015. The committee also said that it had established over 60 links to porn on the platform.

It explained that in line with Article 48 of the Kazakh Civil Procedure Code the tumblr.com website was found “illegal” by Astana’s Yesil district court in October 2015 as “products published by the foreign media outlet and disseminated in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan contain information contradicting legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan”. As a result, the committee took measures to restrict Kazakh internet users’ access to the microblogging platform.

The committee said it had notified Tumblr on the block and stressed that access to it would be restored should it bring its content in line with Kazakh law. In September 2015 Kazakhstan banned the Vimeo.com video hosting website for similar reasons.