
Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram Restricted in Southern Turkey - infodocket
https://netblocks.org/reports/twitter-facebook-whatsapp-and-instagram-restricted-in-southern-turkey-oy9RzE83
======
dopamean
> Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram Restricted in Southern Turkey

It's kind of incredible how that head line are so terrifying. The only
explanation for this is that people don't want information getting out of that
area. It's so fucked up.

Maybe this is a bit naive to say but I really hate that this is just how
things are. We all know what's going to happen and there's nothing that can be
done about it. It doesn't really seem like it'll ever change either.

~~~
plehoux
Wouldn't Starlink by Space X solve this? Authoritarian govs. would make it
illegal to subscribe... but like VPNs it would be very hard to police, even
harder.

~~~
untreasure
You need to have the ground receiver and those seem relatively easy to
restrict.

~~~
anticensor
Hackable SDRs and small planar antennae are very cheap.

~~~
inimino
"Must be willing to own a device that can get you disappeared" is not a
realistic solution to state-level censorship, despite cypherpunk dreams to the
contrary.

------
mtw
I find Turkey and its government are behaving like an authoritarian regime,
much alike Saudi Arabia. I don't understand how invading another country's
territory is accepted in 2019. On the other side, the Kurds have lost
thousands to fight ISIS (on the behalf of the West), have strong equality
men/women etc. We should support the Kurds and cut connections to Turkey

~~~
m00dy
First of all, Turkey is not invading any country. This is just a military
offence for securing our borders. It is a basic instinct that every state has
nowadays. It is like border that US is now building on Mexico. Just imagine
bunch of mexican gangs trespassing your US border and make some unrest. This
is almost same situation. Turkey is the country that killed most ISIS
fighters.

Having strong equality between man/women shouldn't be the only parameter when
you are picking up your allies. US and Turkey are member of NATO and we have
operations together since then. (Including Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq).
Situation for Syria is a little bit different here. Because, it is too close
to Turkey. If you cut connections to Turkey, it will cost you more.

~~~
johnchristopher
Regardless of wether you are wrong or right I believe you shouldn't be
downvoted since your comment serves as a different point of view.

~~~
iiv
There is no inherent value in having a different view. There's value in having
a different view that has some value.

~~~
johnchristopher
I find value in taking notes of different views, wether or not I or others
grant them values (which in itself is of value to me).

------
primroot
Also related. "Turkey’s Erdogan threatens to release millions of refugees into
Europe over _criticism_ of Syria offensive"
[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-
re...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-release-of-
refugees-to-europe-over-syria-criticism.html) Emphasis mine.

~~~
igammarays
Seems like a fair threat to me. Turkey has been bearing the burden of
accommodating the majority of Syrian refugees. If Europe blocks its efforts to
stabilize a part of Syria so it can repatriate Syrians, it seems logical to
tell Europe "if you won't support our solution, you should share the cost of
accommodating the refugees".

~~~
jaynetics
> Turkey has been bearing the burden of accommodating the majority of Syrian
> refugees.

Are you aware that this is wholly down to a deal between the EU and Turkey
which includes, amongst others, payments of about 6bn EUR to Turkey?

~~~
igammarays
I was aware. But the costs of accommodating refugees are more than just
financial. The social cost is much bigger. I think it's fair that Turkey is
looking for a longer-term solution for asylum seekers, not simply taking money
and feeding them.

~~~
jacobush
Invasion might not be the best way though. I think we will find.

------
grenoire
To add to this; Turkey has had a very turbulent past when it came to internet
censorship. Politicians have been baffled at (and as such scared by) the
speeds at which information spreads online, and have been actively attempting
since then to include the internet in their crusade for media censorship.

Also, Wikipedia has been blocked in Turkey for two years now (see the logo at
[https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasayfa](https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasayfa)
\- "being missed for two years"). It's just a miserable status quo... Savvier
users can circumvent these censors just like anywhere else, but the peoples
are powerless whether they can access information or not.

------
ilyaeck
There is Telegram! They use domain fronting - very hard to block without
blacklisting everything else: [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/telegram-in-
russia-blocked-w...](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/telegram-in-russia-
blocked-web-app-ban-facebook-twitter-google).

~~~
est
domain fronting basically transfers the burden of availability to another
player. It wont last long. China blocked the whole IP block of Google, FB and
Twitter. And AWS IPs are actively blacklisted.

------
erdinc
i live in istanbul/turkey, and i read most of the comments. the solutions
provided ( dns, telegram, other mediums to use etc... ) seems practical but
you are missing one thing, that part of the turkey, just started to use tools
like twittter, fb, etc.. they don't have same knowledge as we in istanbul.

Blocking twitter, fb, and other tools, was their only chance to get
information. i don't say all the information on those platforms are %100
correct but still, they are better then government provided.

Also imagine that, people on that area are just close to the border, yesterday
two bombs dropped and 9 people died, 48 people injured and that is just the
beginning. there was only social media for them to speak out now they don't. I
don't usually follow the press but just because this is a fckng war, i read
some news and articles. I can say that, if those people don't distribute the
news or stuff happening there, I'm pretty sure the world will not know what is
going on there and they will continue to create their own stories.

------
ipsin
I'm still shocked at how thoroughly the United States betrayed the groups like
YPG that we were working with months ago.

Destroying fortifications on the Syrian border [1], providing intel to Turkey.

There's an official denial of a "green light", but it's pretty clear that
that's exactly what it was -- a surprise withdrawal and support ahead of
Turkey's offensive. U.S. hardware, support, and consent.

It might as well be U.S. troops slaughtering them now, but the U.S. press
seems to be treating it as something that the U.S. was not _deeply_ involved
in, or something _deeply_ shameful for the U.S.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/sojtfoir/status/1175869891305451522](https://twitter.com/sojtfoir/status/1175869891305451522)

[2]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/middleeast/turkey-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/world/middleeast/turkey-
attacks-syria.html) ("Because of an American counterterrorism partnership with
Turkey, Turkish aircraft were given access to a suite of American battlefield
intelligence in northeast Syria.")

~~~
OzzyB
I'm more shocked at comments like yours that get echoed and promoted without
any context whatsoever, but then again "Anti-Turkishism" is a thing.

What I'm shocked about is how a so called ally can side and arm a vowed
terrorist group for years and expect there to be no fallout, but then "Pro-
Kurdishism" is a thing.

I do love however the narrative that the Kurds are this angelic force that
helped us when no other would for no benefit at all. Why don't you and the
west just come out and say you want Turkey broken up? It would save us a lot
of time instead of being constantly gas lit.

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
First of all, not all Kurds = PKK (the terrorist organization you are
referencing) and not all arms of the PKK commit acts of terrorism. Second, the
atrocities committed by Turkey are on the same scale as terrorism, the
difference is only in the semantics.

Look at the human rights violations and civilian casualties committed by both
the PKK and Turkey here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish%E2%80%93Turkish_confli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish%E2%80%93Turkish_conflict_\(1978%E2%80%93present\)#Casualties)

There are families and civilians living in the regions being bombed by Turkey
right now and they are defenseless because the Kurds dismantled their battle
stations under the recent Turkey-US agreement.

The Kurds have been massacred numerous times throughout recent history by
Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. It would be naive to think a militant
organization wouldn't form out of the atrocities committed onto them by these
various nations as a means to protect themselves. Not to say this excuses acts
of terrorism and corruption committed by the PKK, but a blanket bombing
campaign is the worst possible answer.

~~~
mda
Is it a blanket bombing campaign though? Do you really believe Turkey is
indiscriminately bombing civilians?

~~~
jacobush
Hell yes

~~~
jacobush
[https://www.svd.se/sara-sprangdes-sonder-av-en-turkisk-
grana...](https://www.svd.se/sara-sprangdes-sonder-av-en-turkisk-granat)

------
jriot
Having lived two hours from Gaziantep, Turkey did this quite often, this isn't
anything new. Often times many sites were blocked, then unblocked depending on
the whims of the government.

------
hello_moto
I lived in a country that recently had an election and while you may think
that this is "evil" (judging from the public sentiment of Erdogan and his
rezime), I have to say that Social Media is very very ugly pre-Election and
during Election (even post-election).

So much propaganda from _BOTH_ sides. Even what perceived to be the "good"
side also had their own dirty Social Media move.

What makes it even worse is that Social Media recommendation engine tend to
create some sort of Bubble so you will see propaganda that you've already
subscribed to and your counter-part will see propaganda that they subscribed
to.

------
postmarkman
Time to do Mastodon and hope around servers of the fediverse!

~~~
olah_1
Relevant Tweet:

>Mastodon is proving to be a system so censorship resistant even its creators
can't censor it.
[https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1147772867783929856](https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1147772867783929856)

It seems like federation is actually more censorship resistant in some ways
than fully distributed p2p systems. Because an ISP could block ports and
things required for p2p connections, right?

~~~
Funes-
Wouldn't the authorities just keep blocking instances (i. e., servers)? I may
be wrong, but I don't think a federated platform is censorship-resistant in
any meaningful way.

~~~
olah_1
I suppose so... I really don't know. How do they find them when they're just
over regular HTTP?

Seems like it would be easier to find p2p traffic. But I don't know.

~~~
luckylion
If each instance is only used by a small number of users, it might not easily
be identified, since the exchange of the platforms wouldn't be visible to
Turkey's censors.

I don't think this really helps as a means of suppressing information. Unless
you block everything, the information will get out and once it's out of the
region, you no longer have control. I believe it's mostly about soldiers
carrying their cellphones around, posting on facebook when they are idle etc,
and you don't want troop movements and staging grounds to be quite that
public. "Hey guys, please no Facebook" doesn't work at a large scale, blocking
those sites is much easier.

------
nyxtom
Thought experiment:

Given an internet connection, you can publish information anywhere, so why
need these platforms at all to publish the information?

\- Viral content, more easily spread among the world network due to the nature
of how these networks operate from a social perspective.

When access is restricted to these websites, what is the solution? Several
options are available:

\- Keep the content you were planning on publishing saved for later publishing
if/when access to these resume \- Given that you yourself might not make it
(along with your data), it is imperative to be able to distribute your content
somewhere else as quickly as possible

This leads the following proposed solutions to problems like this:

\- If any internet connection is available at all, then information can be
published _somewhere_ such that it is capable of being eventually queued into
your public profiles. The only way an authoritarian regime can mitigate this
is by completing banning all internet activity and cell phone use (for
instance, I seem to remember that you used to be able to tweet to a phone
number, or use common endpoints like email to publish your messages).

------
moosey
Ultimately, we can talk about the ethics or whatever around this, but politics
has nothing to do with ethics. I find it shocking that we cannot discuss the
general nature of the US political system, but are willing to discuss what are
ultimately political concerns in other nations.

Either we cover the US political systems, it's treatment of refugees and
immigrants, and the ridiculous denial of science and human welfare... or we
don't and we leave other countries alone. I am as appalled as anyone by what
is happening here, but why would this article be allowed, and not others that
point out, rightfully, that this is due to actions by the current POTUS
(probably for personal gain, too).

Confessing that human welfare is a political decision makes me sick, but look
around.

------
sp332
So... Twitter and Facebook. Would there even be a way to block Facebook but
not Instagram and Whatsapp?

------
EGreg
Here we go again. When social networks are large and centralized, it’s much
easier for governments to shut them down (Turkey, Kashmir) or exert pressure
on them to put backdoors in their encryption (China, Britain, USA).

------
Funes-
What about a distributed P2P platform like Aether[0]? Would that be blockable
by any given state or authority?

[0]: [https://getaether.net](https://getaether.net)

~~~
gaius_baltar
Isn't that basically recreating Retroshare ?

~~~
olah_1
It's a souped-up usenet. Privacy and democratic moderation is built-in.

------
MentallyRetired
Between this and Iraq, it's a tough week for access to the web.

------
toby-
Anything to help them massacre the Kurds quietly.

------
kjar
Is the blocking on DNS, port, pattern matching URLs? If DNS perhaps using an
encrypted DNS could work.

~~~
sercand
In Turkey blocking is done by ISPs. Each uses different methods. They block
with deep packet inspection, URL matching on HTTP websites, and IP blocking
with HTTPS websites.

They even intercept and change DNS results from Google and Cloudflare.

------
alexro
Through the whole history we don't know and will never know what's really
happened/happening. Have you got an idea of how badly native population of
America have been dealt with back then? DO you know what's happening in
Kashmiri, Yemen, Africa, etc?

------
Diederich
Echoing another comment: does anyone here know how this block is implemented?
Is it a DNS block?

~~~
grenoire
Turkey used to implement DNS blocks but these days (because people learned to
quickly circumvent DNS blocks by Google or OpenDNS) they straight up don't
route the IPs.

~~~
coldcode
I wonder with IPV6 could you not come up with a IP hopping protocol so that
you can't actually block specific hosts without way too much effort? Maybe it
would not work for the general internet, but maybe for some alternative just
for this kind of situation?

~~~
toast0
With this sort of thing, you tend to block networks, not individual IPs.
Regardless of how many IPv6 addresses you can use, they're going to be
groupable, most likely.

~~~
grenoire
Agreed, collateral blocks are not necessarily your worries in such scenarios.
You could block all of the (e.g.) AWS datacenters for all that matters, if
your endgame is preventing access to social media services.

------
foobar_
Are there ways to use build a mesh network using phones so that people in a
block might communicate using alternate means?

------
timvisee
Just wondering: what is the state of Telegram in this region at this moment?

------
pearjuice
I find it remarkable how when Israel creates a buffer zone for an open air
prison because "terrorists" the world applauds and accepts their right to
defend themselves, but when Turkey does it they are in the wrong. Surely,
there is some double standard here?

------
sbmthakur
Does Southern Turkey also has a history like Kashmir?

~~~
NoGravitas
Hope this helps:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan)

------
snow_mac
Atleast they didn't block snapchat!

------
enriquto
everybody is freaking out about Hong Kong, and not without reason, but there
are much larger movements going on elsewhere (Ecuador, Kurdistan, Yemen, ...)

Edit: if you think all these places are too far from the "western world",
well, think about Catalonia. We have a lot of arrested political prisoners
without trial.

~~~
oldmanthrowit
Did you really just compare Catalonia: A bunch of rich, entitled Spanish
brexiter equivalents to Kurds who are being slaughtered by ISIS, Assad,
Russia, and Türkiye?

Really???? I spend 2 months per year in Catalonia. There are no kids without
legs in the streets. There are not 4 million refugees there.

Catalonia is _identical_ to a bunch of Rich British wankers feeling that they
are entitled to "more".

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads further into political or nationalistic flamewar.
Perhaps the GP was provocative, but on HN the idea is not to take provocation
and definitely not to blow it up much larger.

We'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow the site guidelines, which you
broke badly with this post.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
oldmanthrowit
No.

Hacker News has become a forum for uber nationalistic right-winged
libertarians. Be them Israeli, Catalanian, Amurrikkkan, or other, HN lays
somewhere in-between 4chan and the daily stormer.

Imma keep posting what I want, Adolf.

~~~
dang
People with passionate politics usually perceive Hacker News as favoring their
enemies. This is a cognitive bias: the comments we dislike make a stronger
impression than the comments we agree with, so it feels like the community is
against us. In reality, it's a large community with a wide spectrum. The
people with opposite politics notice the opposite comments and so have the
opposite picture of HN. Here are some examples from what I assume is the
opposite side to yours:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21192430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21192430)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20644122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20644122)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384662)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19912334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19912334)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325297)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18544961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18544961)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189135)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17002125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17002125)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16997697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16997697)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16947646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16947646)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134205)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16085548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16085548)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16061393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16061393)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16058468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16058468)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16022748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16022748)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915)

Sorry for bombarding you with ridiculously many links, but maybe that makes
the point better.

------
devmunchies
no social media? now watch Turkey's GDP double overnight!

------
m00dy
Dear Ladies,Gentleman and all non binary people, Turkey is doing a really
important military offence and I strongly believe that having this kind of
cautions should be in place to control unexpected things might happen in the
region. Last but not least, this is an actual war not a movie in your tv set.
So, governments should have basic instinct to protect their citizens.

~~~
m00dy
you can devote my comment. But, you can't change my mind.

~~~
nightwing
> you can devote my comment. But, you can't change my mind.

Is that really something to be proud about?

Maybe you meant "By simply downvoting my comment, you don't change my opinion,
so it's better to write a comment with actual counter-arguments", which would
be a comment i would upvote.

But what you wrote sounds like a statement that you have an opinion which you
are unwilling to change independently of arguments and facts, and that is sad.

