Twitter blocks two accounts on its Turkish network | Hacker News Reader

Twitter blocks two accounts on its Turkish network

news.yahoo.com

47 pointsjevinskie25 comments

>Twitter's global policy team said it withholds content only "after due process", such as after having received a court order, and in a tweet said it would not do so "at the mere request of a gov't official".

This is disappointing. Legal standards on free speech are hopelessly inadequate in Turkey, as can be seen from the existence of court orders banning the whole of Youtube. If Twitter obeys whenever a Turkish court orders removal of content or banning of accounts, it will be assisting in censorship - plain and simple.

As for the specific cases of the two accounts that were withheld: The real content of the leaks are on Youtube, and these two accounts were used to 'announce' the leaks to the public, presumably by the leakers themselves. These accounts were retweeted by tens of thousands of people, so if the contents of these two accounts' tweets were illegal, so were those retweets. Will they ban the retweeters too? I don't think so, and this means Twitter's actions will contradict with each other.

The leaks were important in showing the corruption at the top of the government and should not be censored, whatever Turkish courts decide. Tax avoidance, invasion of personal privacy, etc. all seem to be excuses by the government, created to lull their supporters.

And now thank you Twitter. We have just lost our information stream. Our "legal goverment" is so corrupt that nobody cares legal documents, do not process prosecutions but you idiots bow to Turkish government.

Again thank you. Because I respect the HN community I won't swear here.

But feel what I am denying myself to say.

It's either that or Twitter will be completely blocked in Turkey. They're playing a tough game but at least it's a game that the Turkish public can play too, as long as you're faster than the censors.

The alternative is for the government to take down the entire game field.

They have blocked twitter before, Youtube is even blocked right now. But knowing twitter is starting to bow Turkish government’s requests is not assuring anyone.

It's blocking accounts right now. But what may come afterwards is really worrisome. Also Starting with Turkish government will mean other governments will start the same tactics against Twitter.

So any non-Turkish citizen should fear about what is about to come.

Or, they just did the expected. Those accounts were unlawful and there were court orders against them. You or I may disagree with it does not matter.

The question is at what point a service has to accept local laws. Like when a country bans "sexual images" or certain pictures of "prophets" or criticism of its political leaders, does Twitter, or for that matter any other service - esp. Google, has to bow to that law.

I'd imagine at the point that the options become "comply with the law" or "deny access to that locality".

Like any whistle-blowing.It's illegal so no one should whistle-blow and any corruption should stay hidden.

These accounts will just switch to Russian social media or blogs.mail.ru which have Turkish language support and would be happy to host corruption docs of the Erdogan regime. Then use twitter to spread links to it.

Nothing twitter can do if thousands of Turkish twitter users are linking to pastebin entries and other moving targets hosting links where to get these docs.

We have seen haramzadeler switch accounts from @haramzadereler1 to @haramzadeler333 and many numbers in between beforehand. So they will just switch accounts hence it's a matter of time before twitter bows and creates a special api for AKP government just to deny any account they want.

funny, pastebin is blocked in Turkey. The censorship is not conservative in turkey

For Twitter, they preferred complying with the law. If there would not be large interest groups on this event and only known individuals would be acting, I would symphatise. But sorry IMHO this case is too dodgy to call "whistle blowing".

Really? So in your opinion letting people learn about prime ministry level corruption and ministry level threats of starting war with Syria is not whistle blowing?

I think you also believe the recordings are montages.

I do not take sides on this. I just felt both sides are master manipulators and I prefer to ignore both.

Court has declared they can't block Twitter, so it was unblocked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/world/middleeast/turkey-tw...

This was not an issue. Anyway, after Twitter's former lawyer, the one who was fighting for civil rights issue suddenly left, I knew it's all downhill from there for Twitter in terms of fighting for civil rights of their users.

Can't wait for Twister to be mature enough.

http://twister.net.co/

Why accept orders from Turkey and not e.g. Egypt, Iran, etc.?

This was the argument of the Turkish government all the time. Why accept requests from Germany, France, UK, USA but not Turkey?

Also their argument is Twitter does not pay Turkey taxes?

I, International community, Twitter, Turkish Government (or it equals Tayyip Erdoğan) all know what is at stake. It's never about the law or the taxes. It's just about shutting down whistle-blowers or political rivals.

I was wondering what the hell their recent tweets referred to: https://twitter.com/policy.

Just get rid of Twitter and try Twister instead.

Very very disappointing.

Haramzadeler does not mean "sons of thieves". It means "sons of bitches." AFP, so prudish.

No actually it means, "The Sinner Family". "Haram" being sin, as in anything denied to humans by the God.

It actually means "The Sinner Family". You're AK it, dont you?

It actually means "Sons of Sinners".

"Haram" means sin and "zade" is the "mac-" prefix You're AK it, dont you?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com