According to Turkish authorities on Wednesday, the government has blocked access to instant messaging platform, Discord, in line with a court judgement after the platform refused to share information demanded by Ankara.
The popular San Francisco-based company had said in a status update;
“We are aware of reports of Discord being unreachable in Russia and Turkey. Our team is investigating these reports at this time.”
Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communication Authority had published the access ban decision on its website.
The court’s decidion to block access to Discord from Turkey was due to sufficient suspicion that crimes of “child sexual abuse and obscenity” had been committed by some using the platform, according to Justice minister Yilmaz Tunc.
The restriction is coming after public outrage in Turkey over the murder of two women by a 19-year-old man in Istanbul earlier this month. The content on social media revealed Discord users subsequently praising the murders.
Turkey’s Transport and infrastructure minister, Abdulkadir Uraloglu, reacted to the decision, saying that the nature of the Discord platform made it hard for authorities to monitor and intervene when illegal or criminal content is posted.
What They’re Saying
Uraloglu has said;
“Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there,” he told reporters in parliament.
“Since Discord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access.”
Just yesterday, on Tuesday, October 8, Russia’s communications regulator blocked Discord for breaching Russian law. This was after previously fining the company for failing to remove banned content, the TASS news agency reported.
