I am not here to defend twitter block however considering topic filled with political comments i want to fix some misunderstanding.
Twitter is used as alternative channel yet critical for organization of volunteers . They say their operation hit by 70%. However people first ask help from official channel than seek alternatives arriving twitter as first option.
Saying that people asking help under rubble from twitter is straight out political comment. Block happened like 65+ hours after earthquake. 95%+ of rescue operation runs over official channel.
At this point is not that important anymore but I have never seen single tweet that points out you should shut down your phone in area so people under rubble have better change of reception. Which is insane.
Volunteers going there complaining phone/internet not working properly not aware they are potentially blocking people under rubble from access to phone yet complaining about twitter ban.
I am not defending block nor underestimating damage to volunteer organization (about distribution of help) just attempting to balance against political comments.
By the way twitter block is lifted again.
Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
531–540 of 600 posts
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not quite Russia levels of vote fakery, but rather similar to many other backsliding democracies - the incumbent is credibly accused of using their influence to insure victory. See “controversies” on this page, which describes the election where they modified the constitution to give erdogan completely unchecked power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Turkish_presidential_elec...
The subject of that referendum—abolishing indirect election of the president and moving to direct election—is something that people want in America. And the close result on the referendum seems to match opinion polling. Maybe the referendum was rigged, I don’t know. But centralizing more power in the executive, if that’s what the people want, isn’t necessarily anti democratic.
I know “checks and balances” aren’t exactly written in stone by the Athenians, but they seem like an objectively good idea - I’d argue that any attempt to remove them is anti-democratic in a pragmatic sense. See: the situation in Israel as Netanyahu attempts to consolidate power away from the judiciary to protect himself from corruption charges. Also see: “ turkey accounts for 1/3 of the world’s imprisoned journalists”
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Turk, I do not trust people who are using Turkiye in English. That is virtue signaling which is saying they are populist, nationalist etc. etc. I also find the change idiotic at the least though I understand why they did it.
US State Dept has started using Türkiye for its communications...
Interesting. From the State Department:
"Note: The official conventional long-form and short-form names remain “Republic of Turkey” and “Turkey”, respectively. “Republic of Türkiye” should be used in formal and diplomatic contexts. The conventional names may be used in place of or alongside “Türkiye” in appropriate instances, including U.S. government cartographic products, as it is more widely understood by the American public."
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's a nationalistic thing to insist that all languages spell your country's name in the script and spelling of the source language. It's a stupid move by the Erdogan government to get people to stop thinking about türkiye birds when they think of the Turkey country. Other countries get by just fine. Germany, Alemania, Deutschland. Mexico, Messico, Méjico. Japan, Nippon, 日本. China, Zhōngguó, 中国. Every country…
One funny thing is that in Portuguese the word for turkey (the bird) is Perú… also the same word as the South American country. Turkey is Turquia though…
> Turkey is Turquia though…
The bird is named after a series of misconceptions, with different results in different places.
The country is named after the Turks; you expect it to be the same everywhere.
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
> standard US keyboard, we just press AlgGr Standard US English keyboards don't have AltGr. But you may mean ctrl+alt on windows or the 'option' button on macs.
It's the right-alt key. If you're using a layout that defines AltGr, the key will just work like that on a US keyboard. Even with just the US keyboard layout, the right-Alt key can still be used with numbers in Windows to type any unicode character.
> If you're using a layout that defines AltGr
Which the parent was pointing out is nonstandard. There is no alt-gr key on a standard US keyboard. You can certainly remap alt-right to alt-gr but that is nonstandard and doing so does not mean that the key exists on the physical keyboard.
For example my caps lock key is mapped to ctrl-left. That is nonstandard.
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#536Turkey should not be considered a democracy anymore, that's the sad reality. A country becoming a de factor dictatorship should not stay in NATO.
That's fine. Turks will depose him soon. As for NATO, Turkey leaving NATO only helps Russian sphere of influence and any anti-dictatorship person would be against that.
Tell that to the Armenians that Erdogan's good friend Ilham Aliyev wants to genocide (and that only Putin's Russia will defend)
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for the last, those are just lies that people in power find inconvenient. People were saying way more ridiculous things in the summer of 1787, and yet the country I live in enshrined free speech rights.
> Except for the last, those are just lies that people in power find inconvenient. A few of them are plain-old voter suppression, and ~50% of the time, people in power find them incredibly convenient. You don't see them very often, because in most free countries, trying any of them is an incredibly serious offence.
That depends entirely on who does it. An individual versus a government official.
The overarching point still stands. That people being in favor of censoring "disinformation" (ie speech by private individuals) in certain instances but not others is an inconsistent stance that carries a distinct appearance of partisanship.
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even though the printed text is surely the manufacturer's speech. This is a terrible analogy, and evidence that the people who claim we can't protect all speech have no idea what "free speech" actually is. Hint: no, it's not fraud.
Now that you've accepted that we should censor fraud speech you have to define the grey line between unacceptable fraud and acceptable disinformation.
> fraud speech
This is you fundamentally misunderstanding what is meant by "speech". The statement itself is not illegal. The act of misrepresenting the transaction being agreed to is what's illegal.
A specific act that involves many components, only one of which happens to be speech, has been made illegal. The speech component itself has not.
There are certain situations where speech itself is restricted. This is not one of them though.
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you support Elon's censorship of antifa accounts?
Difference between me stopping you from wearing shoes in my house, and me stopping you from wearing shoes in yours.
Not really, no. All three cases (US Gov, Turkish Gov, Elon) are censorship of the public square in the end. I'm against all of them. As far as I'm concerned the US constitutional standard for free speech should apply to any platform above a certain size in terms of daily active users that facilitates communication between those users.
Re: Twitter restricted in Turkey in aftermath of earthquake
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a very subjective judgement and everyone is entitled his or her own opinion. But that one is very biased. As far as elections concerned Turkish election system is very solid as a process and implementation is solid. In the end Erdogan lost Istanbul in the last elections even after that election repeated for only Istanbul, and worse for Erdogan, the second round was much more decisive. People didn't like the elec…
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