Türkiye tests Elon Musk’s grasp of Twitter Analysis by Foreign Policy

The Foreign Policy magazine has published an article saying that the deadly earthquake has forced the billionaire to face his biggest test of Twitter's global responsibility thus far, but it won’t be his last. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

Last week, as Türkiye began to reckon with an earthquake that has now killed more than 35,000 people, Ankara took a brave stand: It restricted access to Twitter.

Restriction of the platform was enacted by Türkiye’s major internet providers, according to monitoring service NetBlocks, lasting several hours before being restored late Wednesday following conversations between Twitter and the government. Turkish officials said the curbs were undertaken to prevent the spread of disinformation during the disaster.

“We reminded the responsibilities of Twitter to our country during this devastating disaster,” said Omer Fatih Sayan, Türkiye’s deputy minister of transport and infrastructure, in a series of tweets after meeting with two Twitter executives. He demanded the platform cooperate on curbing disinformation, false reports, and fake accounts.

But it’s not just the earthquake, and it’s not just fear of false disaster reports. Ankara has never shied away from muzzling critics and the media, and analysts are concerned that the recent blocking of Twitter is a sign of government steps to silence political discourse ahead of highly anticipated elections scheduled for May—and that Twitter may be holding the leash.

“Türkiye has established a clear pattern of throttling social media in times of crisis,” including after natural disasters, terrorism attacks, and political protests, said Suay Boulougouris, who researches Turkish digital rights at Article 19, a freedom of expression group. 

Turkish authorities reportedly detained more than 20 people for “provocative” social media posts that criticized the government’s response to the earthquake. Activists say the government is using social media to shut down dissent as it has in the past, even with the ongoing natural disaster raising the stakes. 

“The laws and various legal provisions act as a fig leaf to cover up the discomfort for the criticism raised through Twitter,” said Yaman Akdeniz, a digital rights campaigner and law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University. Immense public backlash to blocking Twitter during a major crisis was likely the main reason the restrictions lasted less than a day, he said. “It was a bad move and completely unacceptable.”

Elon Musk, once the richest person in the world, bought Twitter last October with the ostensible purpose of boosting free speech—although he always noted that he would follow local laws, signaling a willingness to bend for government demands, like in Türkiye, India, and Brazil, which bristle at the very notion of free expression and which have used their laws to stifle critical voices.

Türkiye is among the top five countries that request Twitter remove content, accounting for 9 percent of global legal demands, according to Twitter’s transparency report from December 2021. Twitter had a compliance rate of 57.9 percent from July to December 2021.

“Recently, we’ve seen the government take steps to tighten their control over social media and tech companies, really under the auspices of curtailing so-called fake news or disinformation,” said Cathryn Grothe, a research analyst at Freedom House. 

In 2020, Türkiye introduced a strict social media law that gave the government expansive powers to regulate social media content. That law was followed up in October 2022 with new legislation mandating jail time for those accused of spreading disinformation. Those two laws laid the groundwork for the government to do things like block Twitter after the earthquake, Grothe said.

“A lot of people were using these social media platforms to criticize the government, criticize their handling of the disaster. And Erdogan and his authorities are seeing that genuine criticism as a means to use this disinformation law, which is really troubling,” she added. 

It remains unclear what conversations or decisions led to Twitter being restored, and neither the Turkish government nor John Hughes and Ronan Costello—the two Twitter executives Sayan said he spoke to—responded to requests for comment for this story. Türkiye’s embassy in Washington did not reply to a request for comment. It is also not clear how much of a role Twitter’s new owner played in getting the restrictions lifted, but news that they would be raised came directly from the billionaire’s account. 

“Twitter has been informed by the Turkish government that access will be reenabled shortly,” Musk tweeted last Wednesday. 

The whole episode illustrates Musk’s limited and selective awareness of Twitter’s global presence and importance—and his difficulty in dealing with these challenges. He weighed in relatively quickly on Türkiye and has personally engaged with European regulators, whose new rules Twitter must comply with later this year. His response to India recently blocking tweets about a BBC documentary on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was that he hadn’t heard about it and couldn’t “fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things.” He has also not publicly weighed in on reports last month of Taliban officials purchasing Twitter’s verification badges for $8 a month under its revamped Twitter Blue subscription service—although the badges subsequently appear to have been quietly removed.

But in many parts of the world—particularly outside the West—Twitter serves as a crucial forum for communication, dissent, activism, and organizing, and disruptions to the platform have far-reaching and sometimes dire implications for its users. The platform has been a key conduit for independent voices in countries such as Myanmar, Afghanistan, and even Türkiye itself, with activists and campaigners often highlighting its role in helping them get their message out.

“The ability to get localized feedback from all around the world, especially from vulnerable and marginalized communities, is essential for the platform to be able to function responsibly,” said Shannon Raj Singh, Twitter’s former head of human rights, who was laid off along with her entire team soon after Musk took over last October.

“I think there is one conception of social media, which is how it’s used often in the West by celebrities, by politicians, by businesspeople. And then there’s some very, very different ways that social media is used in developing countries, in conflict zones, in places all around the world by the global majority,” Singh said. “And I think having those perspectives in place, having those people be able to flag and identify risk, is really essential.”

Even at full strength, Twitter and other social media companies have a long history of missing key local context in countries around the world, sometimes with deadly consequences. But since Musk took over Twitter and fired or drove off thousands of employees, concerns abound regarding the company’s attention to the plight of the platform’s most vulnerable users.

“I’m worried that the cutbacks mean that there are fewer people paying attention to the unique impacts Twitter might be having in different cultures. I’m worried that Musk’s simplistic thinking of complying with local law doesn’t consider how problematic some laws are and how that conflicts with his free speech principles,” said Katie Harbath, chief executive at tech policy firm Anchor Change and a former director of public policy at Facebook. 

“No one platform causes any violence. However, any platform can contribute to it, and if they don’t even have the people to know what’s happening, they might not be able to fix it,” she added.

And even though Twitter has now been restored in Türkiye, there are other ways in which the company’s decisions under Musk continue to impede disaster relief efforts. Twitter recently decided to cancel free access to its application programming interface, the main software interface that allows external developers and programs to use Twitter data, and make users pay for it in a bid to shore up its dire finances. Those changes have reportedly made it harder for researchers and aid workers who often use social media data in the wake of natural disasters to better target relief efforts.

It remains unclear whether Twitter made any concessions to Ankara to restore access to the platform. But Article 19’s Boulougouris hopes Twitter will “prioritize freedom of expression over short-term profits,” both in Türkiye and beyond. “They should not move an inch, and they should not become complicit in government censorship,” she added.