Turkish Government Looking to Impose Ban on Fake Social Media Accounts

By: Ali Raza  |   June 24th, 2013   |   News, Social Media

After giving several warnings to protestors, the Turkish government finally started the crackdown against people on the streets and as a part of this plan authorities have now decided to extend their efforts online. This statement came from Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag on Thursday, June 20th, while talking to various media outlets including Bloomberg. During the gathering Bozdag said that social media, particularly fake accounts are becoming a “weapon” for protest therefore they needed to be controlled. He said, “Slander is a crime under law whether it comes from Twitter, Facebook, news websites, television or from the squares. Making people stand up against each other with hatred, segregating people according to religion, language and classification and inciting people to commit crimes against each other is a crime in today’s laws and regulations.”

 

Turkish media outlet Hürriyet Daily News has reported that the Deputy Prime Minister said that they would not impose a ban on social media sites, “but we will lay down some rules.” Bozdag said that the purpose of introducing new rules would be aimed at preventing the creation of fake or unverified accounts. He said, “If someone is opening up an account, everybody should know the person who opened the account. When we look into the recent incidents, there are many fake accounts opened for someone else. They don’t know this. Tweets are being sent from those accounts. … The opening of fake accounts will be prevented.”

 

Already, the Turkish government has arrested several people, who had made posts on social media sites earlier this month that authorities claimed were either spreading misinformation or igniting protest. This is was not the first time that Turkish government has blamed social media for the protest, as at the start of June, Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself has called the social media “the biggest trouble for society right now,” by saying that “you can find every kind of lie” on Twitter. It is pretty evident now that Turkish government is really upset with the social media because it has caused a lot of trouble for them, especially by enraging the fury of protestors.

 

It is because of this very reason Bozdag did not shed light on the new rules regarding social media. In fact he just said that rules will be “shared with the public when the time comes.” On the other hand, Twitter and other social media sites are facing a lot of problem not only in Turkey, but the outside the country as well, as it is getting tough for them to maintain the balance between users privacy and authorities requests for data.

 

Source: TheVerge

Photo: SFGate