The Turkish government has now been given approval to block any Tweet that it finds “objectionable” or “malicious”, it has been reported.
Twitter has reportedly caved in to the Turkish government’s demands to allow them to censor the social media site in the country, as any “offensive” tweets posted on the site that the Turkish government deems inappropriate for their citizens to read now looking like this:
This censorship of Twitter comes after the Turkish government banned YouTube from the country, after an alleged recording of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan talking to officials about going to war with Syria was posted to the site.
The country had previously blocked Twitter for a number of weeks due to Erdoğan’s strong disdain for the site, though the Turkish court rightly ruled that this act violated free speech laws.
However, it seems that Erdoğan has now partially got his way, as the Turkish government can now allegedly block Tweets and Twitter accounts as it sees fit.
Twitter has refused to comment on the matter, though it seemingly complying with the Turkish government in regards to censoring the site from its citizens is hugely disappointing. Reports have stated that Twitter’s Vice President of Global Public Policy Colin Crowell flew to Turkey in order to reach a compromise, and it seems that this compromise was to allow Turkey to censor the site as it sees fit.
