James Delahunty
28 Jun 2013 7:42
Turkish authorities are cracking down on social network users who posted insults about officials, or incited riots using popular social networking services.
According to the Associated Press, Turkey's deputy prime minister said on Thursday that authorities were investigating people for allegedly insulting officials or using Twitter, Facebook and other services to fuel riots during the month of June.
Protests over government policies broke out in Turkey in June, unprecedented in size and hard to suppress. While the mainstream media in Turkey appeared unwilling (at least at first) to cover the unrest, possibly due to intimidation, social networks filled the void of information.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had referred to Twitter as a menace among other insults, saying it was being used to spread lies about the government.
Since then, Turkey reportedly asked Twitter to open a representative office in the country, reportedly to make gaining information on users easier. It seemed, at the time, to be condemning Twitter relative to Facebook, which there seemed to be suggestions of cooperation with.
Facebook however, took to its own website to set the record straight, saying it has not provided information on protesters to Turkish authorities and that it was concerned about talk of policy changes that would force Internet firms to hand over more data at the request of government authorities.