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Turkey determined to control social media platforms, Erdogan says
- thereyougo 6y agoOnce your cross the line from democracy to dictator, everything becomes legit in your eyes
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agoas a European I wonder if 2021 will be the year we read the same headline about Poland and Hungary - the latter is well on its way
- praptak 6y agoThe former is about to reach an important fork next week. If the ruling party keep the presidential seat, they have three more years of basically unchecked power. If they lose the seat, the checks and balances are back on the menu.
- blumomo 6y ago„... pressing ahead with government plans after he said his family was insulted online“ That’s how you frame your readers. The author doesn’t know whether there’s causal relation between the possible insult and the plans to control the social platforms. But this is how media tricks the readers in thinking so.
- jkinudsjknds 6y agoHe literally referenced the insults as a justification for his actions. So no, this is not media deceptiveness. Quotes from a different article: > "“Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, et cetera.?” Erdogan asked in reference to the alleged insults of his family members. “It is imperative that these channels are brought under control.” > Erdogan said: “Turkey is not a banana republic. We will snub those who snub this country’s executive and judicial bodies.”"
- blumomo 6y agoStill, no evidence of causal relation between insulting his family and the decision to control social platforms.
- hetspookjee 6y agoIs it? Isn't this plain reporting of the events in the sequence that they occured? It's all too often that the media frames things a certain way but I'm having difficulty agreeing with you here.
- lki876 6y agoThe "journalist" could have picked any two events. Picking these to make it seem there is causation without proof.
- learc83 6y agoThat's not what's happening here. There's as much proof as you can have without reading the mind of Erdogan. He had entire press conference where he referenced the attacks as justification for regulating social media. "We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control." This also comes after arresting and detaining several social media users for tweeting the insults.
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- learc83 6y ago> The author doesn’t know whether there’s causal relation between the possible insult and the plans to control the social platforms. I don't know--seems pretty clear to me. “Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, etc...?” Erdogan asked in reference to the alleged insults of his family members. “It is imperative that these channels are brought under control.” Again in reference to the insults: "We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control."
- blumomo 6y agoIn your quotations there's nothing about any insult to his family. That means a causal relation isn't yet proven.
- learc83 6y agoHe was being asked directly about the insults. >"We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control." The "similar attacks", and the "immoral behavior" are direct references to insults against him and his family on social media. These are from the Al Jazeera translation of the press conference if you don't trust the AP: "Erdogan said investigations were under way against those who "attacked" his family by "abusing a newborn". "We will keep chasing these cowards who attack a family and the values they believe represented by them through a baby." "We experienced similar attacks in the past. The lack of monitoring on these platforms have a role in the rise of this sort of immoral behaviour. These platforms do not suit this country. We want these platforms to be banned, taken under control." Please stop being deliberately obtuse.
- blumomo 6y agoNo need to be insulting yourself. I was asking for evidence of the personal attacks and you listed them. The AP should have added then that a newborn was insulted instead of referring to „his family“. Someone who insults a baby must be quiet foolish. There seems to be a heating debate! At least Turkey got some balls and they talk openly about Adrenochrome in the main stream news, can’t be that bad their censorship. In other countries and on Youtube you get deleted and insulted when talking about child abuse. It’s easy to point on other people and label them censorship when you should instead point the finger on your own media.
- bitcharmer 6y agoI wonder what some mid- to long-term consequences of Turkey slipping into dictatorship will be for NATO as a whole. It's clear Turkey is drifting away from the values held by the alliance members. I'm so glad they haven't been accepted into the EU. That would be a disaster.
- haunter 6y agoNothing. Just like how Poland and Hungary are EU members and they are walking their own way not giving a f about anything, rewriting the constitutions and laws as they wish
- hetspookjee 6y agoAnd completely backing each other in the votes as well... It's a sham.
- new2628 6y agoYes, it's a sham that members of an organization are exercising their voting rights. Why not take away these rights in the name of democracy when they are not voting in the proper way.
- lki876 6y ago> Just like how Poland and Hungary are EU members and they are walking their own way not giving a f about anything, rewriting the constitutions and laws as they wish There are mechanisms in place to change constitutions and laws in all countries. The primary function of parliament is to legislate. In Poland, Hungary and the rest of the EU.
- bitcharmer 6y agoThe problem (at least in Poland where I come from) is that the government/ruling party (PiS) are pushing laws that violate the constitution. The same party controls such bodies as consitution tribunal and the high court, as well as attorney general. They can do whatever they want without having to touch the constitution. They just ignore it.
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- riffic 6y agoUrbit is the TempleOS of decentralized social networking.
- hetspookjee 6y agoIt's all too interesting what is happening in the region. Some say he's going back Ottoman empire with his entire navy and claiming pieces of Cyprus to the disliking of Cyprus and Greece. While also performing enormous military exercises under the guise of Mavi Vatan, which also bears symbolic reference to their history. Meanwhile Erdogan is set on keeping the steady flow of immigrants coming for as long as he's the gate holder, the EU will bow to many of Erdogans demands. Concurrently Russia is said be rerunning the USSR book and is desperate in acquiring more territory. For as long as I've lived I can recall the USA being somewhat the voice of reason in these situations but USA is too occupied with their own stuff currently. I think theirs trouble on the horizon as Erdogan and Puttins position become more and more unsustainable with the citizens of said countries being more and more unhappy with them.
- GregarianChild 6y agoI do not see how contemporary Russia is "desperate in acquiring more territory". My interpretation is as following -- please correct me if I'm wrong. Note: I am not endorsing (nor criticising) Russian policies here, just trying to understand and learn. In order to learn, I try and give as clearcut an explanation as possible of my current understanding, so as to make it as easy as possible for others with more expertise to point to where I am wrong (if indeed I am wrong). My take is this: contemporary Russian policy is a variation on "spheres of influence" [1], and Russia treats its neighbours as being in its "sphere of influence", and does not accept them becoming part of NATO. I think the implicit deal with "sphere of influence" neighbours is: as long as you don't join NATO, you can do whatever you like but as soon as you try to join NATO we will stop this, including with force. Currently, Russia has borders with the following NATO countries: Norway, Estonia and Latvia. The latter two joined NATO in 2004, when Russia felt too weak to do anything about it, especially since they are not land-locked, so could be easily be defended by western Navies. A clear example of this was the Russian-Georgian War in 2008. Russia withdrew after a couple of days (but left some "Frozen Conflicts" [2] in place that it can 'turn on' at will, as a power-lever: South Ossetia and Abkhazia). Who would have defended Georgia if Russia had decided to stay, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey? Probably not. Likewise, Russia could easily invade an keep the 'stans. Take land-locked Kazakhstan: huge, rich in resources, nearly empty, and, thanks to Stalin's policy of mixing ethnic groups, about 1/4 of the population is ethic Russian anyway (in 1989 it was nearly 40%). Who would defend Kazakhstan? Mongolia, Uzbekistan , Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan? Probably not. Ukraine is an interesting special case, and the annexation of Crimea can be interpreted in this way: Ukraine came too close to NATO, and Crimea is important for the ability of the Russian navy to project power in the Mediterranean Sea. Crimea is > 2/3 Russian from the POV of ethnic groups and Russia has a higher standard of living than Ukraine, so the majority of the Crimean population would probably have been ok with the policy anyway. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_conflict
- lki876 6y agoHappens a lot in the west too. Reddit, Twitter and Facebook come to mind.
- augustt 6y ago"he's a hell of a leader, and he's a tough man, he's a strong man" expect to see parallels.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoHe said social media companies would be forced to appoint representatives in Turkey to respond to legal requests, which he said were currently ignored. Presumably they will ignore this request as well.
- briefcomment 6y agoIn a dictatorship, cracking down on social media is a no brainer. But I think social media undermines democracies as well. Social media vastly amplifies loud minorities. Democracy assumes that the majority of people are reasonable, so majority rule will also be reasonable. Loud minorities undermine majority rule. Loud minorities have always existed, but social media is now amplifying them to the point of obscuring what the majority of the country actually wants. This is why we can have an election outcome that no one in the media predicted. Add to that the fact that social media is highly game-able and scalable, and you have small groups of people working against the majority of the country. Social media is also a prime playground for international enemies. In that light, I'm moving away from the idea that all social media should be allowed, and seeing actions like this as something worth exploring. I hate imposing restrictions, but social media is a strange and unbelievably influential paradigm, which needs to be handled "like a weapon instead of some toy".
- yingw787 6y agoI feel like the more a head of state is punched from below without doing anything, the better he or she is. I think each insult that runs down the back is a great way to measure the worse paths and timelines not taken, a physical manifestation of the ghost of Christmas Future. It's also a great measurement tool because oftentimes things we do are not within our control, but the things we don't do are, because we choose not to do them. Greatness is a small number of key visionary decisions, and not a bunch of little reactive ones.
- diego_moita 6y agoThere is a reason why we're seeing the rise of the autocrats (Erdogan, Putin, Jiping, Orban, Bolsonaro, Trump, Duterte, Kaczyński, ...): it is because openness and democracy triumphed before. And it won because previous autocrats failed. Edit: my point is: starting in the late 70's, authoritarian regimes failed miserably before all over the world, therefore there's no reason to believe they'll succeed thist time. Remember Marx explaining Charles Bonaparte: history happens twice, first as a tragedy, second as a farce. The fundamental fact is that, in the long run, autocrats are very incompetent and make a lot of mistakes, mostly by hubris and because they're surrounded by yes-men that hide them the truth. They become detached from facts, they think they can control facts until facts control them. Erdogan's strong rule is a drug that Turkey will have to pay very dearly to get rid off.
- noworriesnate 6y ago> it is because openness and democracy triumphed before How do you think openness and democracy triumphing cause the rise of autocrats? Are you referring to Plato's five regimes theory, where each type of government degenerates into a different government, in a cycle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes
- diego_moita 6y ago> How do you think openness and democracy triumphing cause the rise of autocrats? Sorry, I expressed myself badly. It doesn't "cause" it just provides a contrast that makes this look as different of what was there before. If Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East and East Asia were still under the authoritarian rulers of the Cold War era, these new autocrats wouldn't be a novelty. My point is that autocrats failed before and all those places tried democracy. It succeeded in most of them, but a few want to go back to something that is not viable anymore.
- FpUser 6y agoThe guy (Plato) does have a point
- linuxftw 6y agoIt's so weird that people here usually want to regulate social media, but when some other government that doesn't share your worldview does it, it's all of a sudden oppressive. You say the wrong thing online in the UK or Germany, the police come knocking. Everyone always thinks their reason for censorship is exceptional because their beliefs are the one-true virtuous beliefs in the universe.
- 0d9eooo 6y agoIt's not just here. It seems like a common sentiment in a lot of places. It's confusing to me as well. There's a direct line in my mind from calls for social media to be self-regulate or be regulated (interestingly in different ways from conservatives and liberals), to these kinds of comments from Erdogan. It might be causal, it might just create a cultural context, but it's hard not to conclude that echoing calls for regulation of social media in the US aren't being coopted or leveraged in this case in a way that's very predictable.
- magicsmoke 6y agoIt's because openness is a luxury and status symbol. Ohh look how open and so much better I am, and how I'm composed and stoic enough to tolerate all this dissent. But when you take away wealth and security then luxury and status are the first things to go.
- controversy 6y agoThe United States is not much better in terms of this. We have a free press in name only. If you are saying something that certain people don’t like, you are canceled. Your tweets will be taken down since you violated weakly worded community standards. You will be flagged on HN. Etc. Ultimately we have a dictatorship of ideas. The best answer so far is to go make a freedom platform with blackjack and hookers. Essentially we’re told to build better echo chambers.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoAt least I can says something against Trump or even the government and my posts will probably not be deleted. Free press and speech doesn’t mean everyone gets equal speaking time, just that the government is very limited in how it can interfere. It is just a restriction on government power, really. And yes, this restriction on government power is much better than what they have in China, Turkey, etc... it is actually much better.
- new2628 6y agoCan you say something _for_ Trump or the government though? Your posts will not be deleted, but likely downvoted into invisibility.
- catalogia 6y agoTo be frank anti-government censorship concerns me less than pro-government censorship, due to the various asymmetries inherent to the concept of government (e.g. the government operates prisons while those who oppose the government do not.) To be clear, I don't think it's productive. But neither does it make me fearful in the same sort of way.
- whatshisface 6y agoPersonally I have found that on HN there is more of a dictatorship of phrasing than a dictatorship of ideas. Here's the short list of ideas you can't say on HN no matter how you phrase them, I think you would agree that this is not excessive: - "Individuals of one race are better or worse than individuals of another." - "One gender is clearly better or worse than another." - Anything about Republicans or Democrats The origin of this list is not that the mods are biased, it's that they have a 100% correlation with foaming at the mouth. As far as I can tell that's the whole list. Anyone care to add to it? Do not repeat the actual arguments, that will start a flame war.
- at_a_remove 6y agoEveryone seems to want to control social media platforms these days, it just gets dressed up differently depending on how the reporting party feelings about you, after which a journalist will tack on a headline finishing with "... (And That's a Good Thing)" in a way which will never not remind me of a certain Twilight Zone episode.
- grishka 6y agoEvery time I see news like this I can't help but wonder what would happen if federated social media becomes mainstream. All these attempts to regulate social media generally revolve around there being a "platform", it being a company, it caring about profits, it having a legal department etc. It all falls apart spectacularly if you frame social media as something intertwined with the internet itself, with no central authority whatsoever.
- ipnon 6y agoWe see that the convenience of centralized social media is more valuable than the autonomy of federated social media. This is because the centralized social media is easily accessible, practically free and tolerably open regarding opposing viewpoints. Solve for the equilibrium. We would expect federated social media to increase in popularity when the convenience of centralized social media is jeopardized. I believe in Russia, where people don't feel safe voicing their opinions publicly on centralized social media, ad hoc social networks have appeared on safe chat platforms like Telegram to take their place.
- grishka 6y agoI have some ideas about making social media decentralized while keeping global search possible. They need practical testing though, which is something I haven't gotten around to yet. > I believe in Russia, where people don't feel safe voicing their opinions publicly on centralized social media, ad hoc social networks have appeared on safe chat platforms like Telegram to take their place. I'm Russian. Today is the last day of 7-day voting for the very controversial constitution amendments that would grant Putin two additional 6-year terms, among other things. My both VK and Twitter feeds are chock-full of posts about this. People are posting about how asinine these amendments are. People are posting about incessant violations in the voting process itself. People are posting pictures of their ballots. The feeling that people are afraid to publicly voice their opinions is certainly not there.
- ipnon 6y agoThanks for explaining this to me, I am clearly misinformed.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI doubt Turkey is a large enough market to successfully string arm the American companies into playing along; the question is if they can block places like Twitter and develop their own successfully locally.
- CigerSoganli 6y agoA little extra context missing from the Reuters article: > "Do you see why we oppose social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, and so on?" Erdogan said. > "Turkey is not a banana republic. We will snub those who snub this country’s executive and judicial bodies," he stated. > "We will chase those who attack a baby...," Erdogan said, referring to an insult directed at his daughter Esra Albayrak and his son-in-law, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak upon their announcement of their newborn baby. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-erdogan-vows-social-media-controls-156189 https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-erdogan-vows-soc...
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- riffic 6y agoObligatory "the world will be better off the sooner we all adopt ActivityPub" comment.
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- gargalatas 6y agoAt least he is frank. US is doing that for ages.
- rany_ 6y agoWhat are you even talking about? Elaborate please.
- stanfordkid 6y agoIt's easy to condemn this from afar sitting in a super-power democracy, in the ivory tower of free speech. Countries like Turkey, Syria, Egypt etc. are in the middle of geo-political chess games with propaganda coming from Russia, militant groups, militias, rebels etc. Look at what happened with the Arab spring in Egypt... after the leaders fell, even worse parties and fundamentalist strongmen came in. It was lauded as a democratic revolution until the muslim brotherhood came in. Same shit happened in Syria -- now it's devastated. There is so much outcry over TikTok being adopted in masse within the United States -- this isn't really that different. Facebook invests a lot of resources fighting fake news in the US -- I doubt it puts any efforts into propaganda (nor has the ability) that is spread in a place like Turkey. The way to think about these countries behavior is -- imagine foreign governments were sending the KKK $100 of millions along with weapons across your borders. We got a taste of 1% of this with Russian interference -- but it is nothing compared to what happens in the middle east.
- nonsince 6y agoOk I misunderstood "determined" to have its meaning closer to "discovered", and then subsequently misunderstood "turkey" to mean the animal. Definitely made me do a double take
- musicale 6y agoAnd I am determined to control the moon. Currently I have settled for a room-darkening shade.