The Turkish government is “fighting a losing battle” in banning social media network Twitter, experts have said.
Locals continue to tweet via virtual private networks (VPN), anonymous web browser Tor and text messages, said security expert Rik Ferguson.
VPN Hotspot Shield reported a rise in iPhone and Android downloads of over 33,000% in the 24 hours after the ban.
The ban was enforced after allegations of government corruption were shared on the site and not removed by Twitter.
Twitter itself has not commented on the situation but it did post instructions in both English and Turkish explaining how to tweet via text message, which requires no internet access at all.
Ryan Holmes, chief executive of social media manager platform Hootsuite blogged that the firm had experienced three times more traffic than usual from Turkey following the ban.
The US Department of State has described the act of internet censorship as “21st Century book burning”.
“Turkey has nothing to fear in the free-flow of ideas and even criticism represented by Twitter,” wrote Doug Frantz, Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, in a post on the department’s official blog.
“Its attempt to block its citizens’ access to social media tools should be reversed.”
Read more about Turkey’s twitter ban here
Source: BBC
