this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government (lemmy.world)
submitted 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by boramalper@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
192 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3lmuz3nr62k26

Email from Bluesky in the screenshot:

Hi there,

We are writing to inform you that we have received a formal request from a legal authority in Turkey regarding the removal of your account associated with the following handle (@carekavga.bsky.social) on Bluesky.

The legal authority has claimed that this content violates local laws in Turkey. As a result, we are required to review the request in accordance with local regulations and Bluesky's policies.

Following a thorough review, we have determined that the content in question violates local laws in Turkey, as outlined in the legal request. In compliance with these legal provisions, we have restricted access to your account for users.

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[–] ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works 57 points 1 hour ago (3 children)

Funny as I got downvoted to oblivion for saying Bluesky was not really decentralized.

[–] brot@feddit.org 22 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

A decentralized service like Mastodon will have the same issues when governments are knocking on the door. The turkish government totally can force all those small turkish instance admins to defederate instances who are not reacting to legal threats. And all those small admins don't have the resources to fight a lengthy legal battle against their own government

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 4 points 17 minutes ago

But they can use some other instance. With centralized platforms the issue is that they want to do business everywhere. Russia threatened to arrest Google employees in Moscow, for instance. Even without such threats, they want to have access to local markets. That isn't a concern for some instance in Ireland that is supported by donations.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 21 points 1 hour ago

The flip side of that is that instances large and small outside of the influence of the government can do as they please and people can use other means, like VPNs, to access them.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 8 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

The content is still accessible, just not via the official Bluesky servers from that region, with content addressing and signatures you can even be certain that mirror sites haven't modified any content.

[–] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 7 points 50 minutes ago

Where are those alternative servers?

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 1 points 28 minutes ago

So, just like Twitter, then? When the official servers don't show whatever the government tells them not to show?

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 6 points 42 minutes ago

Just yesterday I saw a post on lemmy that said that turkish xitter users were migrating to bluesky. Didn't bother opening to see the comments or read it. Seeing this now, all I can think is "well, what did they expect?"

[–] teslasaur@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago

Funny. Thats what the turks voted for.

But thats none of my business.

[–] ZMoney@lemmy.world 2 points 54 minutes ago

So now we'll have a whole plethora of social networks for everyone to isolate into their own bubbles essentially because our global leadership is comprised of children who can't play nicely with each other. Sounds good, sign me up for TurkmeniNet.

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 21 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I believe there are laws in the EU that would be violated by many rightwing posts (such as glorifying nazis in Germany). The litmus test would be if a complaint about these violations would cause an account to be banned.

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 1 points 28 minutes ago

They never do.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 25 points 3 hours ago (8 children)

If only there was a decentralised alternative, that was more or less immune to this… LOL

[–] MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip 5 points 31 minutes ago (1 children)

How would decentralized alternatives be immune to this?

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 1 points 25 minutes ago

Bluesky doesn’t work if the IP gets blocked in Turkey, but with Mastodon, you would have to ban every single IP from every Mastodon instance and potentially all other IPs on the Fediverse.

Let’s say Turkey blocks mastodon.social. Now people in Turkey can’t access Mastodon.social under normal circumstances, but they can still access fosstodon.org, mstdn.social etc. and access the content from Mastodon.social through those other sites.

Only issue could be media uploaded to Mastodon.social, that’s blocked, unless it has been cached by the website you use.

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[–] dmalteseknight@programming.dev 8 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Well as a company bluesky, would need to abide by the laws of where it is offering it's services.

They can't just ignore the request of the country's government. They could either challenge it in court or stop offering their services altogether.

[–] Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 2 points 49 minutes ago (1 children)

They're based in the United States.

[–] dmalteseknight@programming.dev 2 points 26 minutes ago

Yes but they need to obey Turkish law if they want to offer their services there. Like how US websites have to show a "cookies" disclaimer within the EU due to EU privacy laws.

[–] simsalabim@lemmy.world 1 points 30 minutes ago

If I understand this correctly, then this restriction only applies to Turkey. Which is exactly what you'd expect. If you violate local laws, then there are local restrictions. On a global level, everyone else can still interact with you.

Have I understood this correctly?

[–] quack@lemmy.zip 45 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Did anyone actually expect Bluesky to be different to any other corporate-run social media platform? What was the point of jumping from one to another?

Just more proof that FOSS and proper decentralisation (yes I know that Bluesky is technically federated but this halfway house shit they’re doing is not proper decentralisation) that are the only things that will save us.

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