This Wednesday, a Turkish court imposed a block on the instant messaging service. Discord as a precautionary measure, while allegations of cases of sexual exploitation of minors on this social network.
«At the request of the Ankara Prosecutor General’s Office, the first criminal peace court in Ankara decided that the Discord platform should be bannedin accordance with the provisions of the law on the regulation of publications made on the Internet and the fight against crimes committed through these publications,” said the Minister of Justice, Yilmaz Tunç.
In this sense, he clarified that there were indications that Discord was being used to commit crimes, which is why it was decided to “remove all content publications and block access to web addresses from Turkey.” «We are determined to protect our young people and childrenthe guarantee of our future, from harmful and criminal publications on social networks and the Internet. We will never allow attempts to shake the foundations of our social structure,” he clarified in a message broadcast through X.
The messaging application is today one of the most popular communication services among young people and claims to have 150 million users per month. In the beginning it was designed for an audience that was mainly video game players. However, due to the pandemic and stay-at-home orders, Discord gained a lot of popularity by allowing you to talk to people from anywhere in the world, for free and instantly.
A speaker to praise murders
The country’s technology regulator, the Information and Communication Technology Authority (BTK), has also notified the access ban on its website. This decision comes after two women were allegedly murdered by a 19-year-old young man at the beginning of October.
Following the incident, some Discord users praised the murder, which has sparked public outrage and criticism of the platform. This information suggests that some groups They use the application to recruit minors, blackmail them and sexually abuse themaccording to information from the ‘Daily Sabah’.
On the other hand, the Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya, has assured that the Government “will not show mercy to those who try to poison society, especially children and young people, with perverted thoughts on social networks.”
Also banned in Russia
Social media platforms, including Telegram and X, have been under great scrutiny recently after the arrest in France of the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durovand the ban of X in Brazil.
On Tuesday, Russia’s communications regulator also blocked Discord for violating Russian law after previously fining the company for do not remove prohibited content.
The Russian communications regulator, Roscomnadzor, explained that the authorities made that decision in order to prevent the use of said platform “for terrorist and extremist purposes” and also for drug trafficking. Roscomnadzor denounces that Discord ignored the request to remove 947 materials and also the fine of 6 million rubles (about $60,000) that the Russian courts imposed on it for this reason.
Discord was included last March in the Russian registry of social networks that forces its members to block illegal content, according to Russian law. The regulator specified at the time that the materials that Discord had to remove “they include, among other things, child pornography, calls for extremism, involvement of adolescents in illegal actions, incitement to suicide, LGBTI propagandapromotion of drug consumption and being used as a military tool.
“The Discord messaging system is currently essentially a joint-stock company initially created for use in online games, but over time criminals began to actively use it,” Roscomnadzor denounced.
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