According to the creator of Wikipedia, Twitter’s move to restrict specific information in Turkey the day before its presidential election was incorrect.
Jimmy Wales told the BBC that his organization had spent the previous two and a half years in court to evade identical requests made by Turkey.
He stated that the computer industry should band together to defend open access to knowledge.
Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, stated that Turkey has threatened to shutdown the entire service.
In 2014, Turkish President Recep Erdogan promised to “wipe out” the social network after corruption allegations against his administration were circulated on it.
In Turkey, Wikipedia was similarly blocked for nearly three years after refusing to erase content critical of the government.
After no obvious winner emerged from this weekend’s polls, Turkey’s election will be determined in a run-off later this month.
In a tweet, Twitter said four accounts and 409 tweets had been identified by the Turkish government in a court order, which the firm had then blocked. Twitter added that it would “continue to object in court” to it.
End of twitter post by Twitter Global Government Affairs
But Mr Wales said Twitter should have stood its ground.
“We have been blocked in various places around the world at different times, we have never given in to censorship and we never will,” he told me on the BBC’s tech podcast Tech life.
“If governments around the world believe that in order to get political advantage they can control what their political opponents are saying online or prevent them from speaking online, then they will try that.”
He said Twitter’s actions would put pressure on other websites to comply with future demands.
“I think people in the industry should really stand up and vigorously say no – actually an open internet, a free internet, the free sharing of ideas and knowledge is really crucially important,” he added.
Elon Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has spoken at length about his commitment to giving everybody a platform to have their say.
Twitter said it was told by the Turkish government that it was the only social network which had not complied with its court orders. The BBC has not been able to verify this.
Wikipedia and Twitter are clearly very different services – there is no “tell us what you think” box on the online encyclopedia which Mr Wales said made moderation a lot less complex.
BBC
