Saw Wikipedia get blocked in Turkey back in 2017 and the internet felt hollow for 2 years

I used to check obscure history pages all the time, then one day it just vanished. No warning, just a blank screen from my ISP in Istanbul. It stayed gone for nearly 30 months until they finally lifted it in 2020. Did anyone else notice how much harder it was to fact-check arguments during that time?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ben2d ago

Didn't they arrest a Wikipedia editor right around then?

blake_smith2d ago

They didn't just arrest one editor, they went after a handful of people connected to Wikipedia and other open source projects around that time. From what I remember, the whole thing started because of the Syrian conflict pages that showed Turkish military support for certain groups. The government wanted those edits removed and Wikipedia refused, so they just shut the whole thing down. About the fact checking thing, yeah that was brutal. I had friends who would just give up on arguments because they couldn't pull up a quick source anymore. It showed me how much we actually lean on that site for basic info without even realizing it.