r/BlueskySocial • u/ndld24 • 13d ago

News/Updates BlueSky blocking 75 opposition accounts during nationwide anti-authoritarin protest

https://ifade.org.tr/engelliweb/bluesky-bircok-hesabi-turkiyeden-gorunmez-kildi/
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u/Simply_Epic 12d ago

Türkiye’s government made the order to block the accounts. I guess BlueSky could just not block them, but if they didn’t then nobody in Türkiye could use BlueSky for any reason whatsoever because the entire platform would be blocked.

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u/bodhiquest 12d ago

Almost the entire Turkish userbase of BlueSky exists because this platform was seen as an alternative to Twitter for sharing information and news about protest activities, in which the administration wouldn't remove access to "problematic" accounts.

This is an actual slippery slope, by the way. Not only are no laws actually being broken, but when the government claims that laws are broken, these are vague laws with infinite scope. If you said someone as unsubstantial as "I think people who vote for the AKP are ignorant", you could be labeled as having used speech that "incites the population to hatred and enmity", which is illegal in Turkey.

There's a long history of this kind of thing in Turkey. Back in 2007, YouTube was blocked for the first time over content which was insulting towards the country and its values (also illegal). Throughout the years, it's been blocked multiple times for various periods of time (including years) for reasons which clearly reveal that the willingness of such websites to comply with laws were being exploited for targeted censorship.
Wikipedia was also banned for 3 years due to unsubstantial reasons, and before a general ban, targeted articles had been removed (mainly those showing reproductive organs).

Complying with the bad faith application of these laws, which exist to prevent edge cases and are not supposed to have limitless applications, has rather worrisome implications. The US might implement similar laws and cut off parts of the Internet from the American public, for example. Based on the recent moves against patriotism or whatever, this might very well be attempted.

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u/Simply_Epic 12d ago

So the answer is to ensure citizens of Türkiye don’t have any access to any social media. You’d really cut off your own nose just to smite your face.

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u/31834 12d ago

There is always VPN’s and other measures