Turkey and Russia have moved to block access to Discord, the popular instant messaging platform used by millions of gamers worldwide. The platform reported it was launching an investigation into the outages in these regions, which suggests that the company wasn’t involved in the shutdown.
Turkey at least has explained why it has blocked Discord, but the reason is damning.
Severe Allegations
Turkey has moved to block Discord, citing that the platform accommodates ‘crimes of child sexual abuse and obscenity’. This was a term thrown out against Discord in an Ankara court by Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc, per a report from Reuters.
It was further referenced that Discord’s privacy policies make it almost impossible for security operatives to examine the content being shared on the platform.
Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there. Since Discord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access.
Russia recently banned Discord across the country because of the platform reportedly ‘violating Russian law’. It was stressed in a recent communication that Russian regulators had reached out to Discord to delete a string of ‘illegal items’ but the platform failed to comply, forcing Russian governing bodies to block access to the application.
For years, certain countries have toyed with Discord access, and some maintain a restricted service that might block various aspects of the application, such as VOIP functionality. In the past, countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have blocked voice communications, but a blanket ban on Discord rarely takes place.
Discord’s representatives have advised that an investigation is underway, but it’s unclear how long the service will be offline in these countries.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Bungie is being sued for copyright infringement
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