There are an estimated 6000+ web sites now blocked in Turkey, for a variety of reasons ranging from piracy, pornography, religion and moral. In fact last month two other Turkish social networking sites were blocked, simply because they were for lesbian and gay users.. Youtube is often blocked in Turkey as well, usually because of people putting videos making fun of Kemal Ataturk..

It is in my opinion why the internet should never be censored, by all means arrest and close down criminals and plainly illegal content, but when a single organisation decides to control what a whole nation can see online it surely cannot be democratic.

It is happening across the globe, from the growing black list of web sites in Australia, , the well known Great Firewall of China, to the government in Thailand trying to block anything which criticises the Thai Royal family. All across the Internet, more and more governments are either controlling or monitoring what we do online.

Of course if you seek to control a population, social networking sites are very bad news.. After all these places are specifically designed to share thoughts, experiences and opinions – but what happens when the particular state decides it doesn’t like that specific opinion?

One thing for sure, I’m certain Kemal Ataturk would have been horrified with the TIB.. there’s a growing intolerance being shown in many different areas by the Turkish government inparticular towards what people see or do, thank goodness there are a myriad ways around this censorship!

If you’re interested you can read more about Internet filtering here. Or to learn about staying anonymous here.