Trouble is brewing in Turkey yet again, as access to all social media has been blocked by the government. It is not the first time that this has happened, but given the number of protests in the country on a continual basis, this news is not entirely surprising. Luckily there are ways to bypass these artificial blockades, as free speech should never be censored to begin with.
Turkey Is At It Again With Internet Blockades
Whenever there is public disarray in Turkey, it is only a matter of time until the government intervenes. Access to social media platforms is restricted rather quickly, and public Wi-Fi access can be troublesome. The ongoing protests in the country are not helping its public image, and the government wants to curb free speech if they can.
Among the blocked platforms are the usual suspects, including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and even Youtube. All of these platforms are very popular in the country, and the outage began late last night. So far there is also no indication as to when this blockade will be lifted. Several regions have been cut off from the Internet entirely.
What is rather surprising is how smaller Turkish internet providers are not enforcing these blockades just yet. Whether or not that situation will change remains to be seen. Then again, this seems to indicate that this barrier is not a formal one, which may be good or bad, depending on how people want to look at things.
Getting around these artificial blockades is not as difficult as one would assume. Having no internet access is hard to resolve, though, but those who can still access platforms have a few ways to circumvent the problem. Similar to Russia blocking LocalBitcoins, a VPN service can go a long way in accessing what one wants and when one wants.
Using the Tor browser is another option worth exploring. Although connections through Tor are always slower when compared to traditional Internet speeds, it is virtually impossible to restrict this browser and the underlying protocol. Moreover, it also allows users to remain private on the Internet, which is always a nice bonus.
Solving the WhatsApp problem is slightly more difficult, although not impossible to overcome. There are plenty of peer-to-peer messaging applications and services, both for desktop and mobile users. One of the more popular solutions is called Firechat, which is freely available across app stores on prominent operating systems.
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