It looks like residents of Turkey have seen the last of subreddits and AMAs for at least a little while: the popular user-generated news site Reddit has been banned in the country due to a controversial censorship law.
The ban, which came without prior warning, was put into place "[a]fter technical analysis and legal consideration ... [that led to] administration measure[s] ... taken for [the] website" and gave government officials the right to block users in Turkey from access to the site, according to an official message issued on Nov. 13.
The reason for the block? Turkey's Internet Law No. 5651, which allows the country's version of our FCC — the Turkish Supreme Council for Telecommunications and IT, otherwise known as the TIB — to prohibit sites from posting content like pornography, illegal file sharing, missives about Turkey's president, Mustafa Atatürk, and more.
On top of the nebulous rubric that sanctions Internet embargoes like the one on Reddit, the TIB doesn't require official authorization from the Turkish judicial branch to enact Internet bans and can place them if the given site is merely suspected of harboring or enabling proscribed content. A fairly recent example of this includes the photosharing site Imgur, which was blocked in the country earlier this year.
As of now, there is no word on whether the Reddit ban is temporary or permanent.
Via: The Verge
Photo: Eva Blue | Flickr
