Twitter and Facebook Blocked By Turkish Government

The Turkish government implemented media ban by blocking Twitter and Facebook following the Ankara blasts.

There have always been media restrictions in Turkey and this explosion in the country’s capital has just made everything worse. The government of Turkey has blocked Twitter and Facebook after these blasts. The social media company contained images of the incident, which even showed the car which had the bomb that killed many in the city. The country’s telecommunications authority blocked the website after a court order.

The social media network has always been pressurized for being sympathetic towards terrorists and the ISIS cause, but that is not the case. The variation in the policies and terms of the company applies to all accounts on its platform. The company made several changes in its policies, so that the allegations of it showing sympathy to extremist Islamic groups are dropped. It even shut down numerous accounts and made automatic tools that would detect hate content to take action against them automatically.

Twitter Inc. and Facebook are not the only social media companies that have been blocked by the government of Turkey. Numerous sites have received the same treatment due to images that were being posted on these platforms of the victims and the incident. Users on the social media platform discussed about their feelings regarding this tragedy and started using VPN’s just to regain access of the micro blogging site.

Many users posted their perspectives about the court blocking these social media networks and methods to regain access. The government even took down a publication by a local newspaper, Zaman, as it covered the explosion tragedy. The blast happened on Sunday evening, taking lives of 34 people and further injuring almost 125 people. For now, no one has come forward to take the responsibility for this tragedy.

This is not the first time Turkey has blocked social media advertising company. It was done in 2015 as well, when pictures were posted online of a prosecutor who was held at gunpoint by militants. Now, this company has been blocked once again and this time for being active at the event of the blast.

The blast took place at an overcrowded transport hub of Ankara killing and injuring numerous people that were present. The blast happened in a suicide car, its pictures were posted on Twitter, causing even more controversies. The aggressive decision taken into consideration by the government of Turkey had to be done in order to avoid panic, even though it is inevitable at this point, this was the last resort.

Twitter has quite a lot to lose from this block and in the one crucial department where it has been suffering for a while now, its user base. If the micro blogging site is failing to grow its user base, it certainly can not take risks in losing the ones it already has.