Twitter banned the micro-blogging website and had the service blocked today at around 11.30pm in Turkey.
This is after the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan minister blocked the service because he thinks its a ‘troublemaker’ after it aided the protest of closure of the park. During a rally in Bursa in the west of the country, he said “I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish
Republic.”
Well the service was later blocked and visiting the Twitter website redirects to a message from the Turkish Government.
The drama unfolded on Twitter where hashtags #TwitterblockedinTurkey were trending and later tweets and screenshots of how to Tweet from Turkey were posted on thw social network.
Wikileaks also had a forum of how to access Twitter in Turkey.
Here is how Turks can actually Tweet;
SMS
The Turkish government did not block the SMS based platform for twitter and Twitter’s @policy handle posted how to Tweet using SMS on Turkish Telecoms. The message was tweeted in both English and Turkish.
Changing DNS
Several users are reporting they are able to bypass the block by changing their DNS settings with solutions like OpenDNS or Google DNS. This however isn’t easy for non-techies however DNS numbers are being written on posters in Turkey.
Using Tor and VPN
Turkey’s firewall isn’t as strong as the Iranian firewall and use of Virtual Private Networks can let users to access the site. Some users posted that opening the site using the Tor bundle or browser could let you tweet. I mean if a network can run a drug marketplace it should be easy to access a poor firewall in the 21st century.
Since Tor is built to access to blocked news and sharing sites blocked by governments then using it to access Twitter is a good cause.
In fact over 17000 tweets per hour were tweeted from Turkey after the block.
Dictators can mess with social media platforms but the 21 century will always laugh at them. Just in case anyother website or service gets blocked users bypass and media content they desire.
This is the reason why I don’t get worried about the government blocking any website whether its a hoax or not, there are many ways to access such websites.
Source: Mashable
