ISTANBUL, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Turkey has blocked access to instant messaging platform Discord in line with a court decision after the platform refused to share information demanded by Ankara, Turkish authorities said on Wednesday.
The San Francisco-based company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Turkey’s Information Technologies and Communication Authority published the access ban decision on its website. Justice minister Yilmaz Tunc said an Ankara court decided to block access to Discord from Turkey due to sufficient suspicion that crimes of “child sexual abuse and obscenity” had been committed by some using the platform.
Ok torn on this. Against censorship 100% by governments. Also against using CSAM as an excuse. But discord IS rank with abuse like that, and they aren’t really doing much to curtail it
To be honest, a block like that only affects normal users. Criminals or people who really want access will not have any difficulty finding a way to access discord.
I think it is a tactic to get discord to follow the rules, not to actually limit harm.
Fortunately we have lots of ways to circumvent censorship.
Discord isn’t an encrypted messenger nor a p2p one so I don’t know exactly why you would take it down instead of taking down people sharing illegal content by yourself.
