When Farmville got blocked was when it got really silly.. The Turkish ISPs directed by the newly formed Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB), blocked all access to this application from within Turkey. The problem was not with virtual farms, but the creator of the application – Zynga.. It was the fact that Zynga produced gambling and poker applications that was deemed as unacceptable..
There are an estimated 6000+ web sites now blocked in Turkey, for a variety of reasons ranging from piracy, pornography, religion and moral. In fact last month two other Turkish social networking sites were blocked, simply because they were for lesbian and gay users.. Youtube is often blocked in Turkey as well, usually because of people putting videos making fun of Kemal Ataturk..
It is in my opinion why the internet should never be censored, by all means arrest and close down criminals and plainly illegal content, but when a single organisation decides to control what a whole nation can see online it surely cannot be democratic.
It is happening across the globe, from the growing black list of web sites in Australia, , the well known Great Firewall of China, to the government in Thailand trying to block anything which criticises the Thai Royal family. All across the Internet, more and more governments are either controlling or monitoring what we do online.
If you want to control what people think or what people say, of course social networking sites are a very bad idea. After all these places are specifically designed to share thoughts, experiences and opinions – but what happens when the particular state decides it doesn’t like that specific opinion?
I’m certain Kemal Ataturk, would have been very upset with what the TIB are up to now.. there’s a growing intolerance being shown in many different areas by the Turkish government inparticular towards what people see or do, thank goodness there are a myriad ways around this censorship!
If you’re interested you can read more about Internet filtering here. Or to learn about staying anonymous here.
Tags: blocked proxies, blocked youtube, internet censorship, websites blocked, youtube blocked