Twitter is also trying to fix things and get Turkish govt to restore access

Mar 22, 2014 19:07 GMT  ·  By

The Turkish prime minister recently promised to “eradicate” Twitter regardless of what the international community thought. Now that he’s actually managed to take down Twitter access in the entire country, the world reacts and it’s not favorable to this decision in any way.

Twitter yesterday announced a simple measure to bypass the blockade, one that involved the simple use of text messages. This, however, only allows people to send messages and not to view their feed, like they’d do normally.

Yesterday evening, the company who was also celebrating its eighth birthday issued a short message on the platform, expressing its support for its over 10 million users in Turkey.

“We stand with our users in Turkey who rely on Twitter as a vital communications platform. We hope to have full access returned soon,” the company wrote, indicating that they are most likely discussing the issue with Turkish authorities.

The European Union has already reacted to the issue through the voice of Neelie Kroes, commissioner for digital agenda. “Turkish people and international community will see this as censorship. It is,” she said.

The White House spoke out about the situation as well, slamming Turkey for censoring the service.

“We oppose this restriction on the Turkish people’s access to information, which undermines their ability to exercise freedoms of expression and association and runs contrary to the principles of open governance that are critical to democratic governance and the universal rights that the United States stands for around the world,” The White House wrote, explaining its point of view.

Furthermore, the US govt didn’t resume its activities to issuing a statement, but said it has already conveyed the concerns to the Turkish governments. They urged the authorities to respect the freedom of the press by permitting the independent and unfettered operation of media of all kinds and support the people the Turkish citizens in their efforts to restore full access to Twitter.

The important part of the message is that the Obama administration dubbed Twitter as a “basic communication tool,” likening it to phone access, text messages or mail.

Truth be told, that’s what Twitter has evolved into over the years, distancing itself from other social networks. It has become, in fact, one of the primary sources of news and one of the places where countless stories break first, before any news articles are published.

Twitter became inaccessible on Thursday night, but people soon found alternative ways to connect to the service, either by using VPN tools or changing their DNS. Turkish authorities managed to block Google DNS though, a service that many were using due to its simplicity.