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It was when they blocked Farmville that it started to get really silly.. When the Turkish ISPs were directed by the TIB to block this application.. Of course they were not particularly concerned about blocking access to virtual farms on Facebook, it was an inadvertant result of blocking access to Farmvilles creators – Zynga. It was the fact that Zynga produced gambling and poker applications that was deemed as unacceptable..
As it stands there are now well over 6000 web sites, being blocked in Turkey for a variety of reasons including pornography, piracy, religion and moral reasons.. Last month two other Turkish social networking communities were blocked, the reason because they were for gay and lesbians. Youtube itself was blocked because of some videos that were put on their web site making fun of Kemal Ataturk the founder of modern Turkey.
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.
All over the internet, governments are seeking to control and monitor what we do online.. All across the Internet, more and more governments are either controlling or monitoring what we do online.
For a government seeking control, 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?
One thing for sure, I’m certain Kemal Ataturk would have been horrified with the TIB.. 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.
