Twitter is banned in Turkey, and so is Youtube.

Posted on March 24, 2014 by weehingthong

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FIRST, HE BANNED TWITTER. NOW HE BANS YOUTUBE.

The move came a day after a court ordered a suspension of the Twitter ban.

Star

Friday March 28, 2014 MYT 12:07:57 AM

Turkey bans YouTube after Twitter

Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan is clamping down on social media. - AFP

Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan is clamping down on social media. – AFP

ANKARA: Turkey banned video-sharing website YouTube on Thursday, having blocked Twitter a week earlier after both were used to spread audio recordings damaging to the government, local media reported.

The move came hours after the release of an audio file on YouTube, purporting to be of a security meeting in which top government, military and spy officials discuss a possible scenario for military action inside Syria.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government informed mobile phone operators and internet service providers of its decision to block YouTube, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on its website.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2014/03/27/Turkey-bans-youtube/

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*WHO IS THE TWIT?

TURKEY HAS ANNOUNCED A BAN ON TWITTER BUT THE NUMBER OF TWEETS SHOOT UP!

Twitter has been a target of Erdoğan’s increasing anger since May of 2013, when the social-media platform was used to help organize the anti-government protests that spread from Istanbul’s Gezi Park throughout Turkey. Back then, he called Twitter a “scourge.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/03/erdogan-bans-twitter-turkey.html?mbid=social_retweet

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Star

Tuesday March 25, 2014 MYT 10:25:05 PM

Twitter ban sparks ‘arms race’ with tech savvy Turks

by jonny hogg

ANKARA (Reuters) – Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan rails against Twitter as part of a plot to blacken him and portray his Turkey as corrupt; but Turks in growing numbers are exploring ever more innovative ways to beat his ban in what has become a cyber-battle of wits.

Last week, few Turks were conversant with technical terms such as VPN or DNS, but that has all changed now, in the pursuit of the forbidden. In a nod to old-style political protest, “workarounds” are even daubed on walls in Turkey’s major cities.

Cartoons of Erdogan pointing a shotgun at a blue bird, the logo of the social networking site, are circulating widely. Even allies have made rare forays into insubordination: Ankara mayor Melih Gokcek tweeted a smiley face and acknowledged using a technological ruse after Erdogan ordered Twitter to be blocked.
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But over the weekend, authorities in Ankara began closing loopholes, triggering what Sandvik calls a “censorship arms race”, with users constantly shifting to different technology.

ALWAYS A WAY ROUND

“The question is, what will the government do next? I don’t think they will be able to block 100 percent, there will always be a way around the censorship, (it’s) whether they can make it difficult enough that users just give up,” Sandvik said.

Initially, many people delved into their computers’ settings to change the DNS or Domain Name System – effectively sending their traffic via different servers not initially subject to the ban. When the government caught on and blocked Twitter’s website directly, people turned to other technology to dodge the ban.

VPN software – which circumvents web-address-based bans – skyrocketed to the of top free download lists in Turkey’s online Apple and Android software stores.

Downloads of the VPN software Hotspot soared to more than a million in 72 hours from 10,000 a day before the ban, according to a tweet from David Gorodyansky, CEO of the company behind the program.

The use of TOR software has also surged. TOR makes web surfers invisible and was widely used in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, as governments cracked down on protests.

Nevertheless, the number of Turkish language tweets has dropped sharply from Thursday’s peak, according to data provided by Semiocast Analytics and quoted in MIT Technology Review.

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2014/03/25/Twitter-ban-sparks-arms-race-with-tech-savvy-Turks/

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*THE STREISAND EFFECT

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.

It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently generated further publicity. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters, to suppress numbers, files and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

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Mar 21

Turkey bans Twitter, and boy are people pissed:

 

Embedded image permalink

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52m

Outrage as bans /via >

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The number of tweets shoot up after the ban is imposed!

16h

“Tweets In Turkey Are Up 138% Even Though The Country Banned Twitter”

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WITH THE BAN HAS COME VARIOUS WAYS OF CIRCUMVENTING THE BLOCKING!

Previous
Next
9h

Turkey Government bans Twitter, Learn How to unlock it.

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fz.com

Turkey bans Twitter because it’s ‘biased’

ISTANBUL (March 23): Turkey said on Saturday that Twitter was “biased” and had been used for “systematic character assassinations” of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government, a day after Ankara’s ban on the site prompted an international outcry.
However, a senior Turkish government official later told Reuters that talks with the social media company on resolving problems which led to the block were going positively.
The Turkish authorities blocked Twitter late on Thursday, hours after Erdogan vowed to “wipe out” the social media service during the campaigning period for local elections on March 30.
Leading condemnation from Western governments and rights organisations, the White House said the Twitter ban undermined democracy and free speech in Turkey.
The site remained blocked in Turkey on Saturday. Those trying to access it found an Internet page carrying court rulings saying it had been blocked as a “protection measure”.
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Erdogan’s office said in a statement the ban on Twitter had come in response to the company’s “defiance” in failing to comply with hundreds of court rulings since last January.
“Twitter has been used as a means to carry out systematic character assassinations by circulating illegally acquired recordings, fake and fabricated records of wiretapping,” the prime minister’s office said.

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Bloomberg View

Photographer: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-21/turkey-bans-twitter-to-save-democracy

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The New Yorker

March 21, 2014

Turkey Vs. Twitter

Posted by

erdogan-twitter-ban-580.jpg

Before a crowd of supporters at a campaign rally on Thursday afternoon in the city of Bursa—about a two-hour ferry ride from Istanbul—Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, vowed to ban Twitter. The threat came in the middle of a particularly fiery speech, even for Erdoğan, who wields a nuclear arsenal of angry declarations and allegations. “We now have a court order,” he said. “We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. They will see the power of the Turkish Republic.”

Just before midnight, as though yielding directly to the force of Erdoğan’s fury, Turkey became one of only two countries in the world to block Twitter entirely. (The other is China.) Four separate court orders prevent Turkish Internet service providers from connecting to Twitter’s servers, making it impossible to access the service.

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Mar 22

Turkey bans Twitter; other platforms next? & …

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