Turks by-pass government Twitter ban

Getting the message out

While the Turkish government is desperate to stop its citizens talking about the coup, its brutal crackdown afterwards and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s corruption, it is fighting an uphill battle.

Last week the Turkish government officially blocked the country’s 33 million Internet users from Twitter, but soon afterwards numbers 8.8.8.8. and 8.8.4.4. started being spray painted on walls.

Now according to News.mic these are Google’s Public DNS addresses which can be used to get around the government’s ban. Apparently Turks are sharing the number everywhere and as a result are Twittering as much as they like.

A Istanbul blogger Serhatcan Yurdam said that masses of ordinary citizens are learning how to use this technology and teaching each other how to change their DNS, how to use VPNs so they can tweet.

Erdogan wants to eradicate social media, which he considers “the worst menace to society.” What appears to have got his goat was when a leaked voice recording of him and his son discussing how to hide $ 1 billion dollars of cash in safe houses was circulated on the site. Erdogan called the conversation “completely false” and a “dirty plot.”

In fact he managed to get Turkish media to say all that which is why social media is now effectively used as medium for sharing accurate news. Which is the complete opposite of what it is in the West, unless it is news about cats.